I laughed reading this story in the TOI, the home for all secularists. The TOI, as I know, has been a meeting-point for all secularists post 2002 Gujarat riots. I had to leave it as a regular reader, finding its one-sided nonsense unbearable in 2007, five years after Godhra’s infamous train carnage. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, since I’ve always known the TOI as one of the two newspapers reaching my home since the 1970s, my childhood days. The other being either Gujarat Samachar or Sandesh, the Gujarati stuff. But, the English media began losing its integrity in the aftermath of the BJP’s rise, which almost coincided with the Babri Mosque demolition in 1992. The questions raised by the BJP have since then gone almost unanswered by the secularists, resulting into a widening gap between two contrasting opinions about what constituted a secular and law-abiding nation, such as India.
The more under pressure they came from the Hindutva blokes, the more histrionic they became in the English press since 1992, and finally started seeming totally incoherent post 2002. There were two massacres in 2002, first the Godhra train carnage and the subsequent riots thereafter, both mindless in nature no doubt, yet the secularist chose to pick up – as usual – only the larger of the two facets, the riots part, for obvious reasons. I’ve never seen an editorial in the TOI or elsewhere in the mainstream English media, questioning the political sanctity being given by the secular outfits to the Muslim ghettoism and communalism in this nation. For them, Muslims mobbing and burning a train in broad-day light is a result of the earlier acts of Hindu atrocities over Muslims and therefore politically correct. They blame the Hindu zealots and BJP’s urban middle-class voters for whatever happening against the Hindus. Some of them even go to the extent of putting the blame for all wrongs within the Indian Muslim community on the majority Hindus.
In their opinion, Kashmir should be freed, if Jammu began fighting for its Hindu identity. They would also not mind agreeing with the 26/11 perpetrators that it was the Babri Mosque demolition and Gujarat riots that were to be blamed for the savagery they were carrying out. This sounds maddening…real maddening! What right do the Pakistanis have to poke their nose in Hindu-Muslim problems of this country? By this argument, the Pakistanis won’t be surviving even for half a day and be instantly nuked by the world community for the kind of Jihad they have spread. Besides, the history suggests Muslim rulers played a havoc on India’s heritage during their times. What will take place, if every non-Pakistani and non-Muslim started thinking on those lines, the way Jihadis and their secular friends in India do?! I worry more for the English speaking secularist, for it is they who sitting at the high places patronize the Muslim violence, and are increasingly becoming a hate figure among the not-so-affluent and affluent both (for the latter, check this out…and this…and this as well from the Indian Express, my current newspaper). How far can they continue to carry on the way they have under India’s constitution, it appalls most non (yet secular)-secularists.
The recent discovery of Hindu terror outfits is frightening for this reason, but I don’t think they can go much beyond where they have by now. Pakistan has shown where you might end up by allowing the majority terror unchecked. Nobody from within the Hindutva fold may like to tread that path ever.
So, finally a Supreme Court Judge decides to differ from whatever has been over played by the secularists for so long – the Gujarat bashing since 2002! Its a symbolic and humble gesture, yet a great indication where the exhausted secularist might be headed to.
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