It’s such a shame

                    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.