While we often associate the Taliban with religious extremism but the latest foreign dispatches tell us that radical Hindus in India have shown their ugly side. Hindu radicals are leading attacks on Christians as part of a larger campaign to turn India into a Hindu nation.

News reports that three weeks after brutal attacks against Christians in India's eastern state of Orissa in December, hundreds of believers are still hiding out in the surrounding jungle with 2,000 in refugee camps.

At a time when India's economy is speeding ahead it is sad to know that their societal values and religious sentiments are going in reverse. It can't be good for a country that boasts of some of the world's best computer brains but is sadly very primitive and backward in religious ideas.

Religious fascism is the new enemy of world peace since the demise of communism.

I was aghast to read of the mentality of Hindus in India who still subscribe to outlawed notions of the caste system which is a major reason for the downtrodden lives of many lower caste Indians who are condemned from birth because of their low caste.

I am glad that Hindus in Malaysia are more progressive and do not believe in such unjust ideas that deprive the poor of the chance to improve themselves. It was a Hindu extremist who killed Mahatma Gandhi for allowing Pakistan to be turned into a Muslim state, and the brother of Gandhi's murderer died last year apparently unrepentant.

Religious extremism is alive and well in India, and of a kind and scale not seen in Malaysia, and that should be of concern to every peace-loving person.

Ignorance often is the fuel that allows religious fanaticism to burn. When Hitler started his campaign against the Jews, the Germans were the silent majority. And we know what happened to the silent majority. If we have learned nothing from history and the Holocaust we have learned nothing at all.

It is ironical that as India joins the global family with Indians in huge numbers overseas (you only need to visit London and Los Angeles, never mind Malaysia and Fiji), Hindu extremists can blindly harbour such narrow nationalistic ideas about their country.

It behooves us all never to be counted among the silent majority because it is our individual and collective responsibility to speak out for those who have no voice. Whether they be persecuted Christians in India or Buddhists in Burma or Muslims in Serbia, we should lend our voice to the cries of the persecuted.

Religious fascism is an old foe but our new common enemy.