Islamic Barbarians Destroy Ancient Buddha

From the Times of India. What is the problem with these people? Allah never decreed this kind of thing. Of course, most of these people can't read the Koran and they have no idea what it really says. Barbarians. I suggest we put enough estrogen in their water supplies to turn them all into enuchs during the next 5 years. You don't see women acting like this. Shadow of terror looms over Buddha 18 Nov 2007, 0000 hrs IST, Shobhan Saxena,TNN Every piece of rock tells a story. The monks of Gandhara knew this. Hundreds of years ago, when Swat Valley was not yet soaked with the bloodstains of history, Buddhist monks walked through the haze, leaving their footprints in the dust. Climbing steep rocks burning under a fiery sun, they worked on the hills with their little iron tools. Days turned into weeks and months into years, and the monks’ skin turned into sunburnt leather, but, chanting mantras under their breath, they kept cutting and carving the rocks. And one day, as the tools stopped playing music on the rocks and layers of dust dissolved into crisp air, the Buddha emerged on the mountain. With eyes half closed and a half-smile on the face, He was there - immortalised in rock; stored for posterity. That’s how this valley was, with thousands of statues, hundreds of rock-cut images and even the footprints of the Enlightened One spread all over. But that was Gandhara - a flourishing culture under the Kushan kings. Now, Swat is a godforsaken valley in a failed state on the brink of collapse. In this corner of Pakistan, history is being reduced to great heaps of dust with Kalashnikovs and mortar fire. In this valley, under control of Mullah Fazlullah, a hardcore Taliban commander, things have turned bizarre. The mullah, who commands a heavily-armed militia, preaches hate from the radio and forces girls to wear burqa. He has banned Hindi films, music and even polio drops. And this week, following in the footsteps of the Taliban, the ‘Radio Mullah’ turned his attention to the Buddha when his band of thugs drilled holes into a 130-foot-tall and 1,300-year-old rock-cut image of the Buddha, filled it with explosives, and blew it up. A few weeks earlier, his men had riddled the Buddha - sitting in a meditating posture - with a hail of bullets, reducing his face to a bowl of dust. It’s the tragic tale of Bamiyan being replayed all over again. The Buddha of Swat was second in importance in South Asia only to the Bamiyan Buddhas. Now, it’s gone. And, as the mullah’s men spread their net of hate and terror across the valley, there is a threat that some of the most important Buddhist sites in the world, including the remains of stupas built over the ashes of the Buddha, may vanish forever. The process has already begun, as large parts of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan fall to the militants and undergo Talibanisation. Vishakha Desai, director of the Asia Society in New York, saw this dangerous trend recently. ‘‘In 1995, I was able to travel through the region without any fear and received warm support from local residents....Today, little more than a decade later, the atmosphere is so poisoned that neither local community leaders nor the local police came forward to protect these monuments,’’ she wrote after the destruction of Sawt statue, where the Pakistani forces have been reduced to spectators as the mullah calls the shots. ‘‘There are vast numbers of Buddhist sites in Swat and other areas of northwest Pakistan. At this point, all of them are under threat,” Desai warns. On its birth, Pakistan carried away with it a vast historical and cultural heritage ranging thousands of years. Some of the most important Buddhist, Indus Valley Civilisation, Vedic and Mauryan Empire sites were situated in Pakistan. Though as a nation, Pakistan has been struggling with its history, it has done pretty well to preserve ancient art and culture in its archaeological museums. As the mullah’s men trained their guns on the Buddha, the deputy curator of the museum made frantic calls to the police. But Pakistan’s forces, locked in a battle with militants, failed to react. And this is the real problem. Pakistan is not in a position to save its heritage and the militants are raring to wipe them out. ‘‘Once historical evidence is destroyed, it cannot be recreated. It’s gone forever. They should take care to preserve the historical sites,’’ says G T Shende, director (antiquities) at the Archaeological Survey of India. But even though parts of Pakistan are now in exactly the same situation as Afghanistan when it fell to the Taliban, the world is watching the drama in silence. When Mullah Omar’s men destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, there was a global outrage. But thanks to Pakistan’s role in the war on terror and the West’s nervousness about the fate of its ally, the destruction in Swat has been met with silence. Even India has failed to react. Historians know that this vandalism is not an ‘‘internal matter of Pakistan’’. But many of them are quiet. If the world watches quietly and the militants increase their area of influence and destroy ancient relics, important links with our history will be reduced to dust forever. And when a rock turns into dust, it tells no story.