Author: Arindam Chaudhuri
Publication: The Sunday Indian
Date: December 7, 2008
URL: http://www.thesundayindian.com/07122008/editorial.asp?pageno=1
As I remained hooked on to Times Now (which,
by far, gave the best coverage possible and reminded me of CNN's Iraq war
coverage way back in 1991), and without sleeping for a moment for the first
twelve hours, saw the mockery of our democracy, I really felt sad for our
brave policemen who gave up their lives - just like the many innocent people
who also paid the price - for a non-committed, spineless, political class
ruling this great country. Every time a political leader spoke, it was a feeling
of shame that I felt somewhere deep within, and couldn't help but wonder when
we would see the end of this rotten, old and decaying lot who can sell this
country to the dogs for a few hundred crores. It was indeed sad to see the
nation pay the price for their uncommitted, visionless leadership. Haven't
we had enough of disgusting and shameless statements like 'we are planning
to modernize our equipments and increase budgets for our intelligence departments...'
etc? Forget having any kind of moral responsibility to resign instantly from
ministerial posts after their sheer failure to protect the country time and
again, they are such a bunch of illiterate and shameful individuals that they
don't even feel ashamed and embarrassed to come up and give those sickening
and predictably stale, dated statements again and again.
And as I thought of the whys of 26/11, I couldn't
help but put the blame on our government's virtual anti-Hindu sentiments,
for all practical purposes not just today, but over years and years. Of course,
I had been feeling this especially during the last fortnight and almost everyday,
as I saw newspaper after newspaper devote endless newsprint to "Hindu
terrorists" and "Hindu bombs". In my entire life, I don't remember
reading even once any media house in India calling anyone a "Muslim terrorist"
or any bomb a "Muslim bomb"; and rightly so... But the true or false
revelation (of course, I believe that whether Hindu or Muslim, the guilty
should be brought to law) of one rare exception of finding a Hindu behind
an act of terrorism gave our entire ruling political class the freedom to
instantly coin a new word called the Hindu bomb to malign Hinduism (and, but
obviously, the BJP too with the elections round the corner). Well, it's very
easy to do so in India. That's because Hindus are the people who, despite
being the majority in Hindustan, are the people who can be abused in India
and gotten away with. Because Hindus, in reality, aren't terrorists or bomb
makers and are supposed to be tolerant, patient and - dare I repeat what Gandhi
said - even cowards! So Hindus can be abused in this country by every scheming
political class wanting to garner the Muslim vote bank during elections. It's
not just that they can be tortured brutally (even women) by investigating
agencies, but the fact is that for Hindu arrests, there aren't even any human
rights groups jumping in and creating farcical noises.
But that's not all. Assisting the political
class mostly willingly (and, at rare times, due to no alternative choice)
in this conspiracy is almost the entire Indian media and its lot of fake and
mostly half-educated journalist fraternity. Pampering Muslims blindly - even
terrorists caught red handed - or their extremism all the time gives most
media houses and journalists an illusion of large hearted (farcical) secularism.
Some media houses have made it their business to support Muslim terrorists
et al because then, there are crappy human rights groups around the world
who fund them and praise them and give them awards by organising pseudo-intellectual
seminars and gatherings. Of course, for those media houses that refuse to
tow the government's line of press release campaigns, the government would
put tens of income tax, foreign exchange management, MRTP cases, etc., against
them, so that to save their backsides, they start falling in line.
And pampering and useless tolerance of the wrongs of any community, when it
comes to the nation's security, is what is the sure recipe of 26/11s and the
reason behind India's fate today. This is exactly what doesn't let governments
in India take rightful actions. Because their fear all the time is that if
a Muslim bomber is hanged, a Muslim terrorist is interrogated, a Muslim-majority
locality is searched, either they will lose their vote banks or - according
to their illiterate definitions of secularism - not remain ultra secular.
And that is the difference between the USA and India. The Americans know how
to differentiate facts from pseudo intellectualism. They have nothing against
the Muslim world as such - nor have we ever had or should have - but they
have decided not to tolerate Al Qaeda type of extremism. And once decided,
they have the courage to go all out behind destroying the very roots of such
organizations. And that's the difference between a strong nation and a weak
spineless nation full of opportunist politicians. A strong nation takes the
right decisions and goes all out to implement it. A weak spineless nation
just says 'we will take strong action', then does nothing; and given the first
opportunity, creates new farcical terms like "Hindu bombs" through
slavish media houses, in order to show how 'secular' their outlook is and
to create a false air of alarm that even Hindus are creating similar terrorism...
How utterly shameful!
How will a nation take strong action when
no one has the courage to come out in the open and say the problem categorically
and clearly? And every "Indian Muslim" will agree that every non-Indian
and terrorism-believing anti-Indian (Muslim or Hindu) should be given the
most ruthless punishment and should be pulled out from every hideout of theirs
and thrown into jails, for "believing in democracy and secularism doesn't
mean compromising with the discipline and security of a nation." No nation
does it; and we should stop doing it right away. At The Sunday Indian, we
have always believed in being logical and fair. If George Bush was wrong on
Iraq, we repeatedly went behind him through all our magazines; and if we thought
that there was logic in 'Azaadi for Kashmir', we went ahead and did a cover
story on it... and with the same belief, today we assert that democracy and
secularism cannot be maintained by starting a campaign branding a bomb made
by some Hindu terrorist as a Hindu bomb. The pillars of democracy and secularism
are about identifying ruthlessly - and without looking at religion - who are
those who are time and again threatening this country's security, and going
behind them ruthlessly. And that's when in peace we will know how to love
people of all religions; and just like Dr. Zakir Hussain and Abdul Kalam in
India, and Barack "Hussein" Obama in USA, one day we will proudly
also have a Muslim prime minister and not even realise what his religion is
- because, above everything, we all need to be Indians, and we all need to
do everything possible to give that sense of Indianness pride and respectability.
If 26/11 does not make us realise the need to do it, nothing ever will!