[nukkad] THE MAKING OF AN INDIA IN THEIR OWN IMAGE

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The candle that lights another, loses nothing - Swami Vivekanand
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Hello,
Just now I am receiving the following from another list. The article is a
bit long, but very interesting.

Rohit Zaveri
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THE MAKING OF AN INDIA IN THEIR OWN IMAGE


http://www.vigilonline.com/news/plain_speak/vigil_resp_gujarat_elections.htm

Sayeed Naqvi has done it again. And so has Salman Khursheed. Star News
featured this Congress politician on the then forthcoming Gujarat elections.
The discussion inevitably veered around to the Gujarat riots and to Godhra.
Mention was made of the 'shahadat' of the Hindu women and children burnt in
the Sabarmati Express at Godhra and Salman Khursheed shrugged off their
deaths with a nonchalant "there are doubts about their shahadat". Now I
don't know how 'shahadat' translates into English, 'victimhood' or
'martyrdom'. It is irrelevant. What is certain is  that innocent women and
children and innocent men died that day, burnt alive by a murderous mob.
Surely no sane person can question that they were victims? No matter who is
responsible for burning them alive - domestic terrorists or terrorists from
across the border? But Khursheed can get away with shrugging off the deaths
of innocent Hindus because our English media, our English press, our secular
intellectuals and vote-bank politi......

But this is not the first time that such obscene accusations have been made
by the English media and secular politicians. S.R.Balasubramaniam, a
big-time Tamil Nadu Congress politician, reacting to the bomb blast in the
Chennai RSS karyalaya in August 1993, which killed 11 swayamsevaks, put
forth the theory that the RSS had itself planted the bomb and set it off
killing its own swayamsevaks, just to malign the Muslims. And this
notwithstanding the fact that Hyder Ali and Imam Ali, two hard-core jehadi
Muslim terrorists were being sought by the Tamil Nadu police for this
ghastly crime.  And of course, the nasty insinuations in the English press
that the Coimbatore blasts which almost killed L.K.Advani, was the handiwork
of Hindus themselves, of the BJP itself, not only to malign the Muslims but
also to ensure electoral victory for the BJP in the then forthcoming Lok
Sabha elections.

The Hindus of J&K are being killed not by indigenous, home-grown domestic
Muslim terrorists but by jehadis from across the border is one oft-repeated
falsehood. Not that we do not have these murderous hordes slinking across
the border, but  Imam Ali, Hyder Ali, Geelani,  Basha and Palani Baba are
the domestic variety. There is a conspiracy to keep mum about why these
Indian Muslims kill  Hindus and take up arms against the State. And even if
the majority of these Muslim terrorists come from across the border,  there
is not a word about who provides these creatures with food and shelter on
our soil. The pandits of the valley, the Kashmiri Hindus were specifically
targeted and butchered and hounded out of their homes not by Muslim
terrorists but by poor, misguided youth who have taken to terrorism because
of poor economic development in the state. This is another sickening
justification of terrorism and genocide in J&K. Then why are these secular
journalists and intellectuals outraged

This contempt for Hindus and Hindu sensibilities is restricted not just to
condoning Muslim terrorism and repeated and targeted loss of Hindu lives, it
extends to all issues that are sacred to Hindus - cow protection, temples,
Hindu religious beliefs and practices and Ayodhya. On the tenth anniversary
of the demolition of the Babri mosque which stood on the site of the
Ramjanmabhumi, The Hindu fielded a Christian priest the Rev.Valson Thampu in
their newspaper to abuse Hindus and trivialise their centuries old struggle
to liberate the Ramjanmabhumi. Another Christian, this time round, a secular
Christian, T.J.S.George, disrespectfully and contemptuously refers to
Ramchandra Paramahans, a 94 year old man as having 'emerged from the
woodworks' and offering himself as a pin up poster boy on the Ramjanmabhumi
issue. These are the very words used by George to describe a venerable old
man who has sought the liberation of this holy land through the democratic
judicial process. And 53 years ......

Please note,  it is the same journalistic liberty with truth  that
characterises Gail Omvedt, Valson Thampu, the editors and other columnists
of The Hindu. Not to say utter disregard for Hindu sensibilities. Gail
Omvedt writes a two-part article in The Hindu about a year ago titled "An
open latter to Bangaru Laxman" in which she labels the Vedas 'pornography'.
This of course is the height of this newspaper's liberal policy with regard
to right to freedom of expression. This woman is a foreigner, probably a
Swedish woman as her name suggests, abusing our hospitality. She is married
to an Indian, probably a Christian or an oppressed Hindu and dabbles in
sociology it would seem. She operates from Pune and The Hindu features her
regularly as a columnist in its editorial page as its premier and periodic
abuser of Hindus and Hinduism. Several letters are sent to this English
daily expressing the distress of the Hindu community, some imploring the
editor not to allow the paper to be used as..

Now see how the Muslims react when their 'fragile sensibilities' are
offended. The Hindu's cartoonist Keshav was doing a feature about a year ago
for children in the Young World, a weekly supplementary of The Hindu. In
this feature he would tell children stories from around the world and
illustrate the stories himself. Last year, during Ramzan, this gentle,
well-meaning soul wanted to tell the children a story about Islam and
Muslims. He selected a story that he liked and illustrated it. He did not
know that this was a story about Mohammed the prophet and he illustrated
this story too as he had done the other stories in the past. Within the hour
after the newspaper was delivered into homes, The Hindu was flooded by calls
from the Muslims expressing outrage, demanding Keshav's head and an apology
from The Hindu. There are violent riots in Hyderabad, in Bangalore and in
Chennai, a group of angry Muslims storms into the office of The Hindu and
demands an apology and Keshav's head. The i.

If  Keshav's  head is going to be demanded by extremist Muslims and
politicians alike and if The Hindu, the votary of freedom of expression will
not defend him publicly, if Sayeed Naqvi, T.J.S.george and Pamela
Phillipose, the minority torchbearers of pluralism, democracy, secularism,
human rights and all that crap, who are ready and willing to abuse the RSS
and its parivar organizations at the drop of a hat cannot defend Keshav
publicly, if our secular politicians can sit back and enjoy a foreigner
married to an Indian abusing the Vedas as pornography on our own soil, then
we know that they are remaking India in their own image.

And let us not forget that it was The Hindu editorialists and minority
columnists in other dailies, human rights votaries, church-funded NGOs and
Marxist women activists who campaigned for and wrote virulent columns and
editorials defending M.F.Hussein's right to depict Hindu goddesses any which
way he liked. And it was the same section which defended Deepa Mehta's right
to depict lesbianism using the names of Radha and Sita. Deepa Mehta too was
banking on the Hindu's civilizational fortitude and tolerance to allow her
to peddle her garbage using sacred Hindu names. This lady tried pushing the
Hindus some more when she entered forbidden territory to produce another
movie on the banks of the Varanasi with the widows of Varanasi and Brindavan
as foil for some more garbage. If this is the message that The Hindu wants
to send, that it will grovel and crawl in apology only when it is physically
threatened by the Muslims, and will otherwise thumb its nose at Hindu
sensibilities, if this is.

What are the features of this remaking of India, their 'idea of India'? It
is a pluralistic, secular democracy with no intrinsic character of its own.
She has no tradition, no civilization, no civilizational heritage that
merits protection and nurturing, no soul, no face, no character and above
all it will not own up to anything even remotely associated with Hindu,
Hinduism and Hindu culture. N.Ram will tell address a Ramzan gathering and
glibly declare that Hindus are a minority in this country because there is
no such thing as 'Hindu' and that there is only Sanathana Dharma and the
Sanathanis are merely a sect! Sudhanshu Ranade will hit and run through his
column in The Hindu that there were three other civilizations before the
Vedic civilization and so this country's roots are not Vedic. While he will
write shocked and vituperative columns on the lynching of the poor dalits,
he will have no compunction about wondering why Advani and Murli Mnaihar
Joshi have not been lynched so far.

These instances are merely samples of the everyday abuse of Hindus and
distortion of national history. Dalits are not Hindus and so they can skin
cows alive or dead and Hindu society cannot value the cow over the dalits
nor can Hindu society expect the dalit to consider the cow sacred because
that is a typical 'brahminical' article of faith. Hinduism is only
'brahminism' and dalits are therefore not Hindus. Neither are the tribals.
So they too are open game for Christian missionaries. And converting the
dalits and adivasis to the Christian faith is both a religious and
constitutional mandate for missionaries. And this right will be defended and
protected by The Hindu and its columnists.

This kind of distorting of the idiom of a debate or discussion is the
stock-in-trade of these intellectuals. Let me give you all another similar
example, two examples in fact. At this conference on 'Media and National
Development' that this writer attended  four days ago, a gentleman passing
off for an economist and defending globalisation told the audience that we
must accept Coca Cola with the same sang-froid that we accept a vegetarian
restaurant in Shanghai. When this writer pointed to him that I found the
comparison dangerously faulty because the restaurateur in Shanghai is not
buying up the local competition in restaurants and converting all local
citizens to his variety of vegetarianism whereas, Coca Cola has already
finished off all Indian producers and manufacturers of soft drinks and has
also aggressively marketed its  commodity in a manner that has even killed
all competition from local soft drink manufacturers like Bovonto and Torino
and Dukes. To which this economist wan..

When Kancha Ilaiah and The Hindu editor asked us all if the life of a cow
was more valuable than a dalit's life, this was the intention. To intimidate
us all into not discussing this further, and above all to prevent the onus
from shifting to the actions of the dalits themselves. More to the point,
the intention is to ridicule the Hindu's religious belief in the sanctity of
the cow. In this incident of five dalits who were lynched to death for
skinning a dead cow, the debate in this country, among the intellectuals in
academia and media, instead of being simple and direct, went into issues of
human rights, idea of religion, nature of spirituality and genocide. This
was no doubt of cathartic and therapeutic value for these intellectuals,
including Kancha Ilaiah, who are even otherwise not going to come forward to
either mediate or act as bulwark between the dalits and caste Hindus of the
region. They only seek to paralyse the administration, distort the issue,
bring infamy upon Hindus...

More dangerous is the infamy that this section of intellectuals and media is
bringing upon the universal values of human rights, pluralism and right to
freedom of religion. This section has advocated the human rights of
offenders and never of the victims. A classic case of this twisted
interpretation of human rights is Sonia Gandhi asking for clemency for the
woman accused  in the conspiracy which culminated in the assassination of a
former Indian Prime Minister on the grounds that if this woman were to be
sentenced to death, her child would become an orphan. Had Sonia Gandhi not
insulted the children of those men and women who had also been killed in
that bomb blast and had she instead offered to take care of and provide for
this child conscientiously, she may have served two noble purposes. In the
end, she served neither and only set a very bad precedent that the State
should deal with women terrorists less harshly than with men terrorists.

The discussion on pluralism, right to freedom of religion, secularism, all
modern values, but very important to any society, have also been maligned
and brought to infamy by twisted interpretations and applications - and all
against the interests of the Hindus of this country. The issues of
Ramjanmabhumi, uniform civil code, Article 370, Islamic terrorism, nuclear
weaponisation, NCERT syllabus, rewriting our history books, Anti religious
conversion Act, Annadaanam in temples, banning cow salughter, Godhra and the
ensuing riots, the demolition of the babri mosque and the ensuing Mumbai
serial blasts, conspiratorial silence of the anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984 - any
meaningful discussion on any of these issues have been perverted and
distorted by this twisted application of the noble values of minority
rights, secularism, pluralism and right to freedom of religion.

This section has only itself to blame if today, an extremely violent and
aggressive section of Hindus is now forcibly swinging the pendulum in the
opposite direction. Ten years ago I was not self-conscious about my
religious identity. Today I am and not in a self-assured manner. I am
conscious of my religious identity as a threatened identity and when the
majority community begins to feel threatened and undermined, then it
mobilises itself and acts in a manner which will become increasingly
unpredictable and uncontrollable. And this I pointed out to T.J.S.George,
Raj Chengappa and N.Ravi at the conference. But typically, N.Ravi wanted to
know if I was implying that we do not need these universal values. These
people do not realise that they are slowly but inevitably closing all doors
to discussions by unconscienably distorting the idiom of discussions. When
doors close for the Hindus of this nation for discussions, for judicial
resolution, for peaceful and non-violent methods to sett.......







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