[Reader-list] Feudalism in Pakistan

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear Murali Ji

I give you a reverse account of what you have said, and ironically, this is
exactly in the vein you have sent the mail to me. May be this may make you
understand what I wish to say actually.

These are also facts you should know:

1) The Babri Masjid was said to have been constructed on a spot which was
said to be the birth place of Lord Ram. Without any historical verification
of the place, or of any temple having been constructed on the spot, a call
was given by the Sangh Parivar and a Yatra was launched from Somnath to
Ayodhya under the leadership of Lal Krishna Advani, to ask for the Ram
Mandir to be constructed. Wherever the movement went, there were riots.
Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh etc. And further more, once he was
arrested by Lalu govt. in Bihar, there were more incidents of rioting,
arson, looting and rape across India.

The entire thing culminated in the second worst communal set of incidents
across the country, particularly in Mumbai, of independent India, the first
unarguably being the riots at the time of Partition. What was worse was that
in many of the cases, unlike say the Partition, the incidents were planned,
meticulously, and selectively Muslims and Hindus were burnt and butchered
with arsonists having even voting lists and having marked homes of the
'enemy' communities. Was that secular?

2) The Shiv Sena gave a call based on an incident which took place at
Radhabai Chawl in Jogeshwari, which was the burning of a few Hindus, to
teach 'Muslims' a lesson to his party activists. The Shiv Sena activists
then went on a killing spree, to follow the dictum of the party chief. The
entire set of incidents is quoted properly in the Srikrishna Commission
report, constituted to investigate the various incidents in 92-93 riots. The
commission indicted Shiv Sena chief to have been a major figure responsible
for deterioration of law and order in the city and the reason for crimes
being committed. Till date, the Commission investigation has not helped the
victims to get justice. And Thackeray openly challenged the police to arrest
him.

Is that secular?

What's more, based on these incidents, Tiger Memon and his boss Dawood
Ibrahim decided to take 'revenge' for what happened to 'their brothers and
sisters' during these riots, by organizing 1993 blasts, which resulted in
death of many innocents. Is that secular?

Then again, at least this case was investigated and sentences were finally
read out about 16 years later. What about the riots though? Will they ever
be investigated? If not now, say in the next 1,000 years?

3) Then we come to 2002. The Gujarat govt first didn't do anything
worthwhile at all to stop Godhra. The Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar,
refused to order any inquiry into the incident at Godhra which led to
burning of 58 people at the station. What's more, the incident was used to
justify the carnage, rapes, mutilation, looting and killing (a massacre and
genocide in a sense) of Muslims to 'teach' them a lesson.

And the CM of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, led the example by openly stating
Newton's third law as the reason for the riots. What's more, it took 72
hours for the Army to be deployed in Gujarat, when the Army could have been
called much earlier. Three days, the rioters had a field day. The biggest
irony is that when the Defence Minister George Fernandes was in Gujarat to
take a stock of the situation, there was news of his vehicle being stoned as
well! If the Defence Minister's vehicle is not safe, what security was the
Modi govt giving to people, may I know?

Was that secular?

What is more, those who organized these riots were seen moving around with
voter lists or municipal lists stating addresses of people. Newspapers like
Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar were giving exaggerating reports daily one
after another of one or the other temple being destroyed, when there were
none in the first place. Editorials were published on a regular basis trying
to justify the violence as the reaction to Godhra.

Modi asked whether Manmohan was providing chicken biryani to those
terrorists who were hiding in Charar-e-Sharif in the 1990's. Was Modi also
enjoying dal-bati and Gujarati vegetarian cuisine specially ordered from
hotels while the murderers and looters had a field day, with the police
doing nothing at all, and sometimes even helping them in a few places? Or
was he also getting supply of some of these women to enjoy himself? And what
was his Health Minister doing being in the Control Rooms to monitor the
situation during riots? And if he couldn't control his police, what is the
use of his 56-ki-chaati?

He doesn't even have the guts without security guards around him. Where was
his masculine virtues then, when women were dragged out in front of their
husbands and raped?

Instead, Modi later went on a Gaurav Rath Yatra to prove that Gujarat had
not lost its honour by allowing all this. Was that secular?

Forget being secular, is that even justifiable?

Were we dreaming when all this news came in? Some Gujaratis then said that
Muslims are lying. Is the death of more than 1,000 people a lie? Are all
these 'secularists' or those who state such things 'liars'? And only Godhra
is the truth?

Tell me this.

4) Karnataka. The Sangh Parivar wanted to teach Christians a lesson for
'proselytization'. Considering that it was their govt. (the BJP govt) in
Karnataka, couldnt' they have registered a police case for conversions under
'fraud, force or allurement' against the respective organizations? And what
about protection of minorities?

Was it secular to see churches destroyed? Has the BJP decided to function in
India under an alternative constitution to the one of India, namely the
Sangh Parivar Constitution?

5) Orissa. Kandhamal. The Swami was killed by the Maoists who even accepted
it, but the RSS and the hoodlums didn't have the balls to touch the Maoists,
othewise they wouldn't even have been seen in this world later. Instead,
they went on a killing spree to destroy Churches and kill tribals who had
been Christians. This way they brought about mass exodus of people, gave a
communal tinge to the election campaign (the accused in Kandhamal riots was
the BJP candidate for the Assembly) and also forced many converted tribals
to 'reconvert'.

Do they even know themselves what it is to be a Hindu, forget being secular?
Do they know what Hinduism stands for? And who gave them the right to decide
whether the tribals are Hindus or not?

6) Every year, the BJP and its sister organizations force people indoors on
the Valentine's Day, in the name of protecting Indian culture. Who made BJP
the vanguard of the Indian culture? (or even the sister organizations for
that matter) Has the BJP patented the Indian culture to have some IPR
(intellectual property rights) over it? And do they have the licence to
decide Indian culture?

If I also become a CM and allow criminals to do to BJP activists what they
have done to the rest of the nation, would that be acceptable or not? I want
an answer to this question as well. State yes or no for this question.

Is all this secular? Tell me that?

I can put more questions here, as many as you would want. And if you think
the Congress is communal, I have no issues with that. But I have a larger
fundamental issue, and that is clear. Nobody has the right to take law in
their own hands. And nobody has a right to restrict freedoms of others.

And the BJP and the Sangh Parivar indulge in that, day in and day out. It's
much better to have a UPA govt. any day, which can be criticized for so many
scams and incidents and should be certainly punished for them (at least they
respond to public pressure and do bring some good acts like the NREGA and
may be the Right to Food will also come in), rather than the NDA, whose
philosophy was development only for the sake of economic growth, and always
minorities felt insecure (and of course, they had their share of scams as
well). Even today, there are more incidents of communal violence on daily
basis in states where BJP rules, compared to those where they don't rule.

Can anybody answer that?

Anyways, your problem as I said is that it's only religio-political matters
which are important for you people. You always feel as if you are the
victim. Hindus are the victim according to you people. You thrive on being
victimized. And that's even strange when you yourself haven't experienced
anything which should make you feel like a victim. And seriously, the only
thing you are doing is to play politics with this victimization, rather than
understanding the context in which those statements are made, or even trying
to forget the past and move forward and do something which can help the
people.

Congratulations to the Sangh Parivar for having played politics with our
minds and having decided us on this forum and elsewhere as well. And for the
Hindutva believers, please start being rational and question your beliefs.
Golwalkar must be having great time wherever he is.


Regards

Rakesh