The majority community in this country has been rendered silent and defensive
R.s. Bhargava
The nation today is clearly divided into two groups. The electronic
and print media, as well as the so-called secular politician, are
clearly siding with the minorities, obviously to appease them and
to secure their votebanks. On the other side of the divide, the majority
community remains as ever the silent sufferer unable to raise its voice
for fear
of being dubbed as Hindu fundamentalists. All kinds of crime committed
by
anti-social elements in Gujarat are being attributed to the members of
the RSS,
BJP, VHP, without any investigation or verification. This only creates
further
hatred and divisions in society.
Yet, it is a known fact that these very groups have always remained on
the
forefront during times of any natural calamity in any part of the country,
or indeed
when politicians tried to impose the infamous emergency upon the people
and
when all democratic rights were suspended at the stroke of a pen by these
very
secularists. At that stage, the media crawled when they were only asked
to
bend.
It is extremely painful to read any editorial or writings by columnists
on the
Gujarat riots, as none of them, to the best of my knowledge, has even tried
to go
into the Godhra issue in depth and discover and dare to publish the real
motivations behind such a horrendous human tragedy. By no stretch of even
the
wildest imagination could a crowd of more than 2,000 people collect with
petrol
bombs, pull the chain of the train and set a bogie on fire within a few
minutes.
The prime minister, who raised the issue in his famous speech at Goa, was
labelled a Hindu fundamentalist. The reports of the speech that were carried
were
very distorted. One would like to ask these people whether it is a crime
to
demand to know who the attackers at Godhra were, and what there motivations
could have been. To my mind, the reasons for such extreme actions have
been
provided by one of the tallest personalities on the world stage, the former
president of the US, Bill Clinton.
In his famous lecture series in the UK, after the September 11 attack on
the
WTC, he said and I take the liberty to quote from his speech There
are a
100 million kids who never go to school. Part of our problem in Afghanistan
and
in the Muslim world is all these kids could not go to public school, so
they went
to madarasas where they were indoctrinated instead of being educated.
He
further adds: It is no accident that most of these terrorists came from
Muslim
countries that were not democracies.
It is these very madarasas which have been consistently producing quality
products over the years in the form of the Ghaznis, Ghoris, Babars and
hundreds
of other invaders. Today, they continue to produce bin Ladens, Omar Sheikhs,
and Shahi Imams, who do not feel an iota of shame in regarding themselves
as
Islamic heroes.
It is people such as these who draw great strength from the unstinted and
assured support they receive from our media and secularists for obvious
reasons. These people are also confident that in India they will not only
go
unpunished but it will be the majority community who get all the blame.