Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 28, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3537328,flstry-1.cms
Do we get bad leaders in spite of having good
people?
If our people are great, why do we have leaders
who fail?
Where are the people if the leaders are not
doing what we think they should be doing?
A people so intensely under attack by the
terrorists can't claim to be brave by sitting silently and petitioning state
clerks. Those who fear get what they fear.
While China, having superbly completed the
Olympics, sent a man for a space walk and Sarah Palin "delighted"
our PM in the US with a handshake, India seems to be descending dangerously
into communal polarisation, reinforced and powered by a secular lobby. In
the process, the morale of the police and other security forces is being affected
for they are facing the brunt from terrorists as well as the secularists in
the government and the media who are running them down, doubting their intentions
and integrity.
Suddenly yardsticks for our judgment have
changed. Opinions, morphed as judgments, are passed not on merit or weighing
its consequences for the society, but by the yardstick of the colour events
wear. The Nanavati Commission's report is to be discarded even before its
pages are browsed because the Narendra Modi government instituted it and it
shows Hindus as victims. The Bannerjee report is to be trusted because the
secular Lalu Yadav instituted it and shows Hindus as aggressors. Strange logic.
Who speaks for the Indian?
Inspector M.C.Sharma's funeral is not to be
attended because he shot at Muslims. When the men in khaki arrested the Kanchi
Shankaracharya, not a single secular channel or newspaper cast any doubt on
the police reports and statements. But when the men in khaki arrested a few
from Jamia Milia, doubts were raised immediately and investigative journalism
flowered.
Anything written about patriotism, even a
good word about Inspector Sharma, is sought to be embarrassed under a general
head - Hindu media. I read this term being used first time in the aftermath
of the Jamia controversy. Anything that Muslims show as a sign of solidarity
with the rest of the India and condemnation of terrorism is either blacked
out or shown apologetically.
Last week, 21st September to be exact, a few
hundred young professional Muslim youth from Okhla and Jamia Nagar organized
a silent procession at India Gate in New Delhi. They were condemning terrorism,
asking for the harshest punishment for terrorists who use Islam for their
crimes, and they wanted to be recognized as patriots. I didn't see the coverage
it deserved. Why?
Who is speaking for the Indians who were killed
in the Delhi blasts? Why did they have to be turned lifeless in a sudden stroke?
Suddenly a blast occurs and their life is
changed. You are going to see a movie, and next moment found dead. Someone
bringing his daughter home from school - suddenly both are dead in a blast.
Gone to market for shopping - minutes later a phone call at home says 'Please
come to claim the dead body'. Terrorism has changed our lives, our behaviour,
our language and relations. Yet we feel hesitant to speak out.
What happens to those who were dependent on
the terror-struck victim nobody knows. They are not news. Can't we speak about
Simran - whose father and grandfather were killed in the previous blast -
and about Santosh, the sweet little kid who got killed in Mehrauli blast on
Saturday?
"Son, what's your religion?" - should
that be our first query and decide what is said next?
Hard law is bad, because it was "used"
against a particular community. Police is bad because it's arresting and targeting
a particular community.
Terror is secular, khaki is suspect
While the nation and her security forces -
that includes the police too, stand firm to combat terrorism, the state power
and the seculars are providing focused support to terrorists and enhancing
their morale through statements and casting doubt on the motives of the anti-terror
action. India's secular cabinet ministers demanded lifting of a ban on a terrorist
organization, proposed Indian citizenship to millions of illegal Bangladeshi
infiltrators, refused to say a word of encouragement to the security forces
fighting terrorists but publicly assured help to the accused whom police,
a part of the government, arrested for blasting Delhi and killing citizens.
All these secular statements had just one
consideration - religion of the groups they want to support or oppose. The
seculars have become the worst kind of communal hate spreaders, with their
extreme one-sided postures and acidic language. In a way these rabble-rousing
seculars have become a security threat affecting the societal fabric and the
morale of the policemen and soldiers.
They ordered a communal head count in the
army, ignored and downgraded celebrations of Bharat Vijay Diwas, 16th December,
and Kargil Vijay Diwas, stopped observing the Pokharan test anniversary in
Delhi and failed to show due respect to Field Marshall Manekshaw. All this
can't just be exceptions; they show a trend, an attitude.
These are the same elements who represent
the governance and by virtue of being cabinet ministers, which ironically
includes having taken an oath that obliges them to be loyal to the Constitution,
succeed in facilitating comforts for the killers and create an atmosphere
in which sympathies for the terrorists are generated and police become suspect
with doubtful integrity. Words like - "they have a soft heart",
"they are our children and hence it's our duty to provide them help",
"nothing can be said till they are proven guilty", etc - are bandied
about to warn the police and reassure those whom police caught at risk to
their lives.
It's good and admirable to stick to a universal
assumption that everyone is innocent till proven guilty. But during wartime
words spoken publicly have to be weighed against their possible impact on
the elements that shoulder the responsibility to safeguard the nation. If
you start being celestially virtuous by sympathizing with the pains and difficulties
of those who have waged a war on the state, it's bound to paralyze the enthusiasm
of patriotic soldiers and civil resistance.
They know their side
In the secular dispensation, to be objective,
liberal and broadminded and have sympathies on humanitarian grounds are reserved
only for terror groups. Is it a secret that these seculars leave no stone
unturned to create an atmosphere where procedural mechanism to punish the
guilty is influenced and driven to believe that the arrested criminal is not
the culprit, but the victim of an incompetent state apparatus.
Remember how a vigorous campaign to release
a lecturer of the same Jamia Milia Islamia was launched in spite of Delhi
police submitting a truckload of evidence about his involvement in the attack
on Parliament? And the famous case of Abdul Mahdani, declared as the "main
accused" in the Coimbatore bomb blast case, which left 58 dead? Karunanidhi
went to see him in jail, provided all the facilities, including a regular
masseur, and finally when on purely "technical" points he was released,
Kerala's Left Front cabinet ministers came out and accorded him a public felicitation?
The charges against Mahdani were as follows:
"Accused No. 14 Mahdani is one of the
key conspirators in the Coimbatore bomb blasts case."
"Accused of collecting and transferring
explosives to the town, ripped by a series of bomb blasts on February 14,
1998."
"Charged under Sections 302 IPC (Murder);
307 IPC (Attempt to Murder); 153-A IPC (Creating hatred among communities);
Section 5 of the Explosives Act and Section 25 of the Arms Act."
Public prosecutor Balasundarm, arguing against
Mahdani, had expressed "surprise" over the judgment to release him
and said he did a good job in assimilating the voluminous evidence of documents
1785 documents marked as evidence, 1300 witnesses and over 15,000 pages of
investigation records. If indeed the case had been presented as thoroughly
as claimed, why did it fail?
If such incidents do not open the eyes of
the people leading our public life, then what's the course left for a law-abiding
patriot?
In any other country facing such a serious
serial terror assault, those who publicly empathize with the terrorists would
have been tried along with the arrested accused of the blasts.
Speak out and say yes to unity.
It's the emergent duty of the media and political
powers to help stop the dangerous polarization taking place in our social
circles and polity post-bomb blasts and public shows of secular sympathies
for the accused killers.
While care should be taken that no educational
institution gets a bad name because of the actions of a few, it's also the
duty of the faculty and the students to show solidarity with the terror-struck
people. Muslim leaders have to come out openly re-enforcing a citizen's solidarity
against terror. If students fail in duty and character, the teachers will
have to share the responsibility for their bad behaviour. It's also wrong
and false that a few wronged people have taken up guns. What wrongs and if
it is indeed so, how many Kashmiri Hindus will have to take up guns?
Rather, the goodness of the religion needs
to be publicized and there will be no dearth of other communities joining
with such Muslims. So far it's only the Hindus who are coming out openly defending
the goodness of the Indian Muslims and their religion. Nobody generalizes
the community as terrorists, unlike in Europe and America. This difference
remains unrecognized though. Maulanas are silent, teachers do not speak out
and the common men suffer in silence. Is that the way we are going to deal
with this war? If people don't forge solidarity and revolt and keep looking
to politicians for all solutions, even god will think twice about helping
them.
