[Reader-list] Speak out and say yes to unity by Tarun Vijay

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Speak out and say yes to unity
28 Sep 2008, 1847 hrs IST,

Tarun Vijay,
in The Times of India

Link -
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/Tarun_Vijay_Say_yes_to_unity/articleshow/3537328.cms

 Do we get bad leaders in spite of having good people?

If our people are great, why do we have leaders who fail?

Where are the people if the leaders are not doing what we think they should
be doing?

A people so intensely under attack by the terrorists can't claim to be brave
by sitting silently and petitioning state clerks. Those who fear get what
they fear.

While China, having superbly completed the Olympics, sent a man for a space
walk and Sarah Palin "delighted" our PM in the US with a handshake, India
seems to be descending dangerously into communal polarisation, reinforced
and powered by a secular lobby. In the process, the morale of the police and
other security forces is being affected for they are facing the brunt from
terrorists as well as the secularists in the government and the media who
are running them down, doubting their intentions and integrity.

Suddenly yardsticks for our judgment have changed. Opinions, morphed as
judgments, are passed not on merit or weighing its consequences for the
society, but by the yardstick of the colour events wear. The Nanavati
Commission's report is to be discarded even before its pages are browsed
because the Narendra Modi government instituted it and it shows Hindus as
victims. The Bannerjee report is to be trusted because the secular Lalu
Yadav instituted it and shows Hindus as aggressors. Strange logic.

Who speaks for the Indian?

Inspector M.C.Sharma's funeral is not to be attended because he shot at
Muslims. When the men in khaki arrested the Kanchi Shankaracharya, not a
single secular channel or newspaper cast any doubt on the police reports and
statements. But when the men in khaki arrested a few from Jamia Milia,
doubts were raised immediately and investigative journalism flowered.

Anything written about patriotism, even a good word about Inspector Sharma,
is sought to be embarrassed under a general head – Hindu media. I read this
term being used first time in the aftermath of the Jamia controversy.
Anything that Muslims show as a sign of solidarity with the rest of the
India and condemnation of terrorism is either blacked out or shown
apologetically.

Last week, 21st September to be exact, a few hundred young professional
Muslim youth from Okhla and Jamia Nagar organized a silent procession at
India Gate in New Delhi. They were condemning terrorism, asking for the
harshest punishment for terrorists who use Islam for their crimes, and they
wanted to be recognized as patriots. I didn't see the coverage it deserved.
Why?

Who is speaking for the Indians who were killed in the Delhi blasts? Why did
they have to be turned lifeless in a sudden stroke?

Suddenly a blast occurs and their life is changed. You are going to see a
movie, and next moment found dead. Someone bringing his daughter home from
school – suddenly both are dead in a blast. Gone to market for shopping –
minutes later a phone call at home says 'Please come to claim the dead
body'. Terrorism has changed our lives, our behaviour, our language and
relations. Yet we feel hesitant to speak out.

What happens to those who were dependent on the terror-struck victim nobody
knows. They are not news. Can't we speak about Simran – whose father and
grandfather were killed in the previous blast – and about Santosh, the sweet
little kid who got killed in Mehrauli blast on Saturday?

"Son, what's your religion?" – should that be our first query and decide
what is said next?

Hard law is bad, because it was "used" against a particular community.
Police is bad because it's arresting and targeting a particular community.

Terror is secular, khaki is suspect

While the nation and her security forces – that includes the police too,
stand firm to combat terrorism, the state power and the seculars are
providing focused support to terrorists and enhancing their morale through
statements and casting doubt on the motives of the anti-terror action.
India's secular cabinet ministers demanded lifting of a ban on a terrorist
organization, proposed Indian citizenship to millions of illegal Bangladeshi
infiltrators, refused to say a word of encouragement to the security forces
fighting terrorists but publicly assured help to the accused whom police, a
part of the government, arrested for blasting Delhi and killing citizens.

All these secular statements had just one consideration – religion of the
groups they want to support or oppose. The seculars have become the worst
kind of communal hate spreaders, with their extreme one-sided postures and
acidic language. In a way these rabble-rousing seculars have become a
security threat affecting the societal fabric and the morale of the
policemen and soldiers.

They ordered a communal head count in the army, ignored and downgraded
celebrations of Bharat Vijay Diwas, 16th December, and Kargil Vijay Diwas,
stopped observing the Pokharan test anniversary in Delhi and failed to show
due respect to Field Marshall Manekshaw. All this can't just be exceptions;
they show a trend, an attitude.

These are the same elements who represent the governance and by virtue of
being cabinet ministers, which ironically includes having taken an oath that
obliges them to be loyal to the Constitution, succeed in facilitating
comforts for the killers and create an atmosphere in which sympathies for
the terrorists are generated and police become suspect with doubtful
integrity. Words like – "they have a soft heart", "they are our children and
hence it's our duty to provide them help", "nothing can be said till they
are proven guilty", etc – are bandied about to warn the police and reassure
those whom police caught at risk to their lives.

It's good and admirable to stick to a universal assumption that everyone is
innocent till proven guilty. But during wartime words spoken publicly have
to be weighed against their possible impact on the elements that shoulder
the responsibility to safeguard the nation. If you start being celestially
virtuous by sympathizing with the pains and difficulties of those who have
waged a war on the state, it's bound to paralyze the enthusiasm of patriotic
soldiers and civil resistance.

They know their side

In the secular dispensation, to be objective, liberal and broadminded and
have sympathies on humanitarian grounds are reserved only for terror groups.
Is it a secret that these seculars leave no stone unturned to create an
atmosphere where procedural mechanism to punish the guilty is influenced and
driven to believe that the arrested criminal is not the culprit, but the
victim of an incompetent state apparatus.

Remember how a vigorous campaign to release a lecturer of the same Jamia
Milia Islamia was launched in spite of Delhi police submitting a truckload
of evidence about his involvement in the attack on Parliament? And the
famous case of Abdul Mahdani, declared as the "main accused" in the
Coimbatore bomb blast case, which left 58 dead? Karunanidhi went to see him
in jail, provided all the facilities, including a regular masseur, and
finally when on purely "technical" points he was released, Kerala's Left
Front cabinet ministers came out and accorded him a public felicitation?

The charges against Mahdani were as follows:

"Accused No. 14 Mahdani is one of the key conspirators in the Coimbatore
bomb blasts case."

"Accused of collecting and transferring explosives to the town, ripped by a
series of bomb blasts on February 14, 1998."

"Charged under Sections 302 IPC (Murder); 307 IPC (Attempt to Murder); 153-A
IPC (Creating hatred among communities); Section 5 of the Explosives Act and
Section 25 of the Arms Act."

Public prosecutor Balasundarm, arguing against Mahdani, had expressed
"surprise" over the judgment to release him and said he did a good job in
assimilating the voluminous evidence of documents 1785 documents marked as
evidence, 1300 witnesses and over 15,000 pages of investigation records. If
indeed the case had been presented as thoroughly as claimed, why did it
fail?

If such incidents do not open the eyes of the people leading our public
life, then what's the course left for a law-abiding patriot?

In any other country facing such a serious serial terror assault, those who
publicly empathize with the terrorists would have been tried along with the
arrested accused of the blasts.

Speak out and say yes to unity.

It's the emergent duty of the media and political powers to help stop the
dangerous polarization taking place in our social circles and polity
post-bomb blasts and public shows of secular sympathies for the accused
killers.

While care should be taken that no educational institution gets a bad name
because of the actions of a few, it's also the duty of the faculty and the
students to show solidarity with the terror-struck people. Muslim leaders
have to come out openly re-enforcing a citizen's solidarity against terror.
If students fail in duty and character, the teachers will have to share the
responsibility for their bad behaviour. It's also wrong and false that a few
wronged people have taken up guns. What wrongs and if it is indeed so, how
many Kashmiri Hindus will have to take up guns?

Rather, the goodness of the religion needs to be publicized and there will
be no dearth of other communities joining with such Muslims. So far it's
only the Hindus who are coming out openly defending the goodness of the
Indian Muslims and their religion. Nobody generalizes the community as
terrorists, unlike in Europe and America. This difference remains
unrecognized though. Maulanas are silent, teachers do not speak out and the
common men suffer in silence. Is that the way we are going to deal with this
war? If people can't forge solidarity and revolt and keep looking to
politicians for all solutions, even god will think twice about helping them.