Author: Radha Rajan
Publication: Vigil Online
Date:
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/news/plain_speak/guj_resp.htm
The Hindu editorial dated September
26, 2002, the news item titled 'NHRC calls for communal harmony' in The
Hindu on page 13 on the same day, the article in the editorial page of
The New Indian Express by Saeed Naqvi titled 'A Time To Choose' and lastly
Shri Habibullah Badsha's 'Attack on human values' on page 12 of The Hindu
dated September 27, all dealing with the massacre of Hindu bhakthas in
the Swaminarayan temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, are good examples of the
reaction and underlying attitude of the intellectuals and the English media
in the last ten or twelve years whenever Hindus and Hindu society have
been victims of Islamic and Christian terrorism and fundamentalism. This
trend of ignoring at best and at worst, justifying and rationalising the
religious persecution and massacre of Hindus was begun in earnest after
6th December 1992, and gathered momentum after Star News opened shop in
India.
The Hindu men, women and children
in Godhra were burnt alive because they were all returning from karseva
in Ayodhya and were raising 'provocative slogans', was the justification
presented to the Hindu community for the Godhra massacre of Hindus; and
the country's intellectuals and the media soon ignored the Godhra massacre
and focussed exclusively and in isolation on the Gujarat riots that followed.
The Mumbai serial blasts of 1993
was to avenge the bringing down of the Babri mosque and so the media ignored
the Mumbai blasts and the horrendous toll it took of lives and property
and instead focussed exclusively and in isolation, on the Mumbai riots;
so was the bomb blast in the RSS office in Chennai in August 1993 which
killed eleven swayamsevaks and destroyed the RSS office completely and
which, insinuated some foolish sections of the political and intellectual
class, was set of by the RSS itself just to malign the Muslims of this
country; so were the Coimbatore blasts in February 1998 - all acts of revenge,
taking their toll of Hindu lives, to 'assuage the hurt Muslim psyche' which
could not bear the destruction of the Babri mosque. Forget the fact that
the mosque was standing on a site that wounded the Hindu psyche for more
than 500 years!
Now let me take up Saeed Naqvi's
center-page article and the Hindu editorial for comment. And for the theme
of revenge let me cite this extremely clever and nasty piece of writing
by Saeed Naqvi. This man, along with Shekhar Gupta is an inveterate names
dropper in all his writings, and cannot resist, like Shekhar Gupta, the
patronising attitude whenever he talks about the BJP or its highest leadership.
This suave, globe-trotting, names-dropping pen pusher is nevertheless a
hardline Muslim, so please don't be taken in by his pseudo-liberal, global
outlook. Read his articles carefully and understand every nuance and shade
to realise the nastiness of the tone and tenor of his loud thinking when
he talks of Hindus and their attempts to assert themselves in the political
space. And also please take note of the difference in tone and tenor when
he talks of the politics of Gujarat and the politics of Kashmir. For one,
he doesn't even bother to call the state 'Jammu and Kashmir'. Now coming
back to the massacre of the Hindus in the Swaminarayan temple in Gujarat,
he says:
" Of course, many people, particularly
in the diplomatic community (subtle names-dropping, please note), smirked
when Advani named Pakistan as the perpetrator of the violence. However
implausible, this was the only course open to him. The alternative, of
playing up the two terrorists on the basis of the Urdu notes found on their
person as belonging to "a movement for revenge", may well have sparked
another round of violence in the state and possibly beyond.
Vajpayee's condemnation of this
'cycle of violence and counter- violence' is the closest anyone in authority
has come to hinting that the siege of the temple was 'counter-violence'
in retaliation for what happened in Gujarat since February 27".
Now let us take this bit of garbage
apart, piece by piece, to see what Saeed Naqvi actually means. He is saying
that Advani, the Union Home Minister lied when he blamed Pakistan for the
attack because he had no choice. It has to be Pakistan or Advani has to
take the Urdu note seriously and accept that the two terrorists were Indian
Muslims avenging the Gujarat riots. Now Saeed Naqvi doesn't just say it,
he adds flavour to his nonsense by adding that the diplomatic community
is actually laughing at Advani. Really? Which 'community, which diplomat?
Naqvi dare not say that. He is merely sticking on a patently false beard
and is disguising his contempt (poorly, I might say) for Advani as that
of the international community.
He also terms Pakistan's role
in the attack as 'implausible'; which means Saeed Naqvi is actually telling
the Hindus that the alternative explanation is the truth - that the attack
against them is a retaliation for the Gujarat riots. Only, like Shekhar
Gupta, he too does not have the courage to say what he means explicitly.
Shekhar Gupta had to go to Pakistan to say what he really thought, and
Saeed Naqvi is wearing the fig-leaf of the Prime Minsiter's words. Strange,
because I think the Prime Minister is saying exactly the opposite of what
Saeed Naqvi says he is saying. The Prime Minister, I would have thought,
was appealing to the Hindus of Gujarat not to react as they did to the
massacre of Hindus in Godhra; which means the Gujarat riots and the riots
which could have erupted now, was the counter- violence which Hindus have
now begun to express in the face of the violence which sections of the
Muslim community and the Christian missionaries undertake incessantly against
the Hindus of India as an expression of their religious duty.
The rest of the article is high-falutin
pretentious garbage where Saeed Naqvi offers gratuitous advise to Advani
and the BJP to modify their attitudes and priorities; in the process, he
also shows the Hindus of Gujarat, Narendra Modi and the politics of Gujarat
their rightful place in his scheme of things, in his elevated vision of
a gently metamorphosing Hindu India into a soft Islamic State, with Saeed
Naqvi as the benign bearded God overseeing the metamorphosis, and the elections
in 'Kashmir' as an important but small off-shoot in the whole process.
In all this verbosity, there is
not a word about the Gujarat riots being the reaction of the long-suffering
and enraged Hindu community to the massacre of its women and children in
Godhra. By choosing to willfully ignore the compulsive addiction to 'jehad'
by a section of the Muslims, who like compulsive alcoholics, always look
for new reasons everyday to do what they are doing, Naqvi is not serving
the cause he claims he is serving. He and the rest of the English print
and electronic media is only emboldening the jehadis with their dishonesty
and their specious, intellectual arguments.
The same willful blindness to what
happened in Gandhinagar in the temple is evident from the editorial of
The Hindu dated September 26.
"After all, the challenge from such
subversive elements is to civil society - and all the liberal values that
it cherishes as for instance participative democracy, pluralism and rule
of law - and not to any particular segment of it. Any response that fails
to recognise this fundamental proposition will betray a total lack of maturity
and, what is more, result in playing into the hands of the saboteurs themselves".
Now let us sort out this bit of
garbage and see why it stinks. It stinks because while The Hindu never
let up on Hindu fascists on the rampage in an orgy of communal carnage
and anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, and went out of its way to splash pictures
of Muslim women and children looking pathetically at the world outside
from behind some bars, there is not a word here in this editorial of Hindus
having been shot dead, men, women and children, while they were offering
worship in a temple; not a word about a Hindu temple having been desecrated,
not a word about Muslim terrorists on yet another Jehadi trip seeking Islamic
salvation through martyrdom or indulging in their daily dose of Hindu massacre
as the shot in their wrist to lift them to some psychedelic heights of
drugged stupor.
What is the editor saying? Not Islamic
or Muslim terrorists mind you, but 'subversive elements'. And it is not
a terrorist attack against a chosen target, the Hindu kafirs, but 'a challenge
to civil society'. Bullshit, tripe and balderdash. And again, this act
of perversion, this massacre of innocents, these persistent and relentless
acts of terrorism are neatly hidden from the reader's eyes with a deft
sleight of hand. This is a challenge to 'participatory democracy, pluralism
and rule of law'. How come the Gujarat riots which was an intense and focussed
expression of Hindu anger, was never described by The Hindu as 'a challenge
to civil society and the liberal values it cherishes of participatory democracy'
and all that crap?
And just so the Hindus of Gujarat
don't get all mixed up and think it was an attack against their women and
children by Muslim terrorists, the editorial tells us that failure to perceive
this as a challenge to civil society as a whole "and not to any segment
of it" 'will betray a total lack of maturity and, what is more, result
in playing into the hands of the saboteurs". Indeed! And what does 'playing
into their hands' mean exactly? That they want the Hindus to react strongly
and ferociously? But why? It is martyrdom idiot. Not content with seeking
martyrdom for themselves, these terrorists want all Muslim victims of Hindu
anger also to profit from collateral martyrdom, no matter how unwilling
these Muslims may be to attain martyrdom in this manner.
When will the Mailini Parthasarathy
s, the Shekhar Gupta s, the Saeed Naqvi s and the Shabana Azmi s ever learn?
When will Communalism Combat, Sahmat, and Nirmala Deshpande, Kuldip Nayar,
and Admiral Ramdas and Ram Puniyani ever learn? Communal harmony cannot
be ensured or attained by the Constitution, the Judiciary, by Church-backed
or Marxist NGOs throwing hysterical tantrums, by the hubris of the English
media or by the ubiquitous 'international community', whatever that means.
It can be ensured and attained only when the Hindus of this country do
not perceive the Muslims and Christians to be threats to their security
- physical, cultural and religious. Communal harmony can be disturbed by
a handful of Muslim terrorists or determined Christian missionaries, but
communal harmony can be ensured only when the Hindus of this country feel
secure.
The NHRC, the Minorities Commission,
as long as they take a skewered view of human rights and refugees and religious
persecution, as long as they have different yard sticks for Gujarat and
Jammu and Kashmir, will become more and more irrelevant India was
a Garden of Eden or an Islamic Paradise, if you will, as long as the Hindus
remained helpless and never reacted to any outrage whether it was seeing
the Nandi in Varanasi obscenely facing the mosque instead of the temple,
or helplessly witnessing the continuing genocide of Hindus in Jammu and
Kashmir, impotently watching the pope amble into India on Deepavali day
and declare that he intends to plant the Church in Asia and harvest the
souls of Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, as long as the Hindus remained silent
and allowed Islam and Christianity to have their way in India, then India
was the symbol of Buddha and Gandhi - the apostles of peace and non-violence.
But when Hindus began to say enough was enough and brought the mosque down
from the holiest of their holy cities, when they reacted to the Mumbai
serial blasts, when they reacted to Godhra, lo and behold, India is a smoldering
cauldron of communalism and religious extremism and these assertive Hindus,
inheritors of the mantle of the Buddha and Gandhi, were now Hitler's faithful.
Such simplistic name-calling will
not resolve the problem. These busybodies must understand that there is
a majority community in India, it is their only land, and Islam and Christianity
must modify their beliefs and practices accordingly. Religious conversion,
and Jehad cannot take advantage of the Indian Constitution to thrive and
rule unchallenged by Hindus and legitimised by the media and the NGOs of
all hues.
