Former president of India Abdul Kalam is the antithesis of much that goes in conventional sense of religious or racial profiling. His faith, if at all, matters minimally so far he is concerned as a public figure. Neither does his appearance. Notwithstanding this, it was he who interacted with chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi and did not even evince any attempt to inhibit any feeling when he hobnobbed with the desi Milosevic. That was when he took over his august office after the pogroms against Muslims in 2002. Kalam was also the antidote of polarization. He along with his ancestral family lived and thrived in the environs of the sanctum sanctorum of a revered Hindu temple. How come then that his background comes in the way of his being profiled as he was frisked by the American airline company!
Much like him was Ehsan Jafri who lived in a middle class enclave of Gulberg society ensconced from the humdrum life of the otherwise dingy and competing and tension ridden life of the Indian streets. Secular in outlook and gregarious in nature, he could hardly be an example of polarization. Even police commissioner PC Pande came to save him but with a caveat, only he and his family members could board the ark of survival. Since the morning of February 28, 2002 the marauding crowd had been yelling for his blood. He made nearly 200 phone calls to those who mattered to save the life of the people who had sought refuge in his house. One such call was to Sonia Gandhi and the last was to Modi. Who torpedoed that ark which Pande had offered?
How could polarization stop by the killing of the MP and scores of those including children and women who were counting their every breath as the last in the Gulberg society housing complex! What subsequently happened there laid foundation of more polarization and deeper and even unbridgeable gulf!
The notification (No. GK/8/2009/COI/102009/33/A) dated June 5, 2009 of the Gujarat government of Chief Minister Narendra Modi establishing a commission to probe communal polarization is fraught with grave dangers. Nothing has been as dangerous to the country as anything that is communal because it divides the people vertically; the division of the land is consequent to this. Instead of learning the lesson right in the beginning of independence of India and avoiding it we have not only continued with it but also developed it as a mechanism for electoral gains (election in Gujarat December 2002). There are some whose survival hinges on this.
It would be wrong to trace every evil of today to 1947. The communal tendencies and mindsets were formed by then. The eighties were the opportunistic resurgence of the same. However, the anti-cow slaughter agitation of the late sixties and the anti-reservation agitation turning anti Muslim riots in Gujarat cross fertilized the Gujarat culture. Neither common language nor the so much vaunted Gujarati entrepreneurship could withhold the onslaught of communalism particularly that of the Hindutva brand.
Polarization on communal lines was planted and nurtured during this turbulence. The experiment in the laboratory of Hindutva was not of ideology but of means of removing physical barriers which were transformed as “the other”. Narendra Modi will go down in history as the most damnable architect of this. Now it is he who is asking for inquiry into the polarization which he himself so eminently brought about. Even praying for rain was used as an occasion of polarizing the society. Once he organized a huge pooja on the Sabarmati River to thank Hindu gods for the rains. He did not stop there. He threw a gauntlet to the Muslims to call upon their almighty to produce rain as the Hindus had done! He pooh-poohed them.
Why this fuss over polarization, then? It is not that he is perturbed by the pathological disturbance of his society there, but it is rather to play another Machiavellian role. For, the sangh parivar knows well that it gives rich dividends.
The dual aspects of the proposed inquiry which are highly charged in meaning are: “polarization of population on the basis of religion taking place in the State of Gujarat” and “the migration of the people following different religions taking place every 10 years after 15th August 1947”. As far as polarization is concerned the government is not disturbed by polarization that really exists because it has done nothing but to maintain that for its own hold on power. Ostracisation and boycott of Muslims is still enforced. What positive step let alone any “affirmative action” has Modi taken to remove it?
The basic premise of communalism in India has been a recourse to past which is quite too hazy at times to prove conclusively any issue that is occasionally raked up. Public memory is short and the communal leaders take this for granted and take the government and their opponents for a ride. This happened as recently as July 9, 2009 when LK Advani dug out a letter of the mayor of the French city of Marseilles written eleven years ago to Swatantra Veer savarkar seva Mandal of Vile Parle. The mayor wanted to know if the government would associate itself with the project. PM Vajpayee did not even bother to reply. However his deputy PM now wants to know if the government has any objection. The right wing deputy and his party are schizophrenic in this regard much like Amitav Ghosh’s vakil babu in the Shadow Lines.
The Gujarat government notification also speaks of allegations made against it that it is responsible for the current division “such allegations and unscientific conclusions create heart burning and distance among the citizens”.
Heartburning is envious discontented feelings usually caused by disappointment. Going by this definition of the word, is the Gujarat government capable and fit morally to ascertain whose discontented feeling or disappointment it is and what has caused it for which he has migrated to that state and, more pertinently, what role his faith has played in this?
There is much deeper polarization of which Modi is most directly responsible. He is as the accounts in the news go subverted the administration of justice. His most notorious speech of how the relief camps of Muslims were baby producing factories was widely reported verbatim and yet his police failed to supply the cassette when the courts and the election commission demanded it. Many were arrested or outright killed in fake encounters by his encounter specialists like DG Vanzara and Narendra Amin. It is now open secret that the pogroms of 2002 against Muslims were state sponsored. Quintessentially he is largely to blame for polarization of the administration. He has not learnt any lessons from history of even recent past that the Great Divide of India was precipitated by the polarization of the administration. It was not for nothing that south Indian police were deployed in the north and west during the partition period.
If the 9/11 supplied the pretext to wreak havoc on Muslims so did the ignominious extraordinary renditions or outsourcing torture. People far from Gujarat were arrested and taken to Ahmedabad and tortured. Among them were the innocents of Hyderabad and Delhi. On July 24, 2009 a judge acquitted Shahid Ahmad Bakshi from Juhapura in Ahemdabad, Farhan Ahmed Shaikh and Hafix Mohammad Tahir from Moradabad, UP whom DIG DG Vanzara had framed for plotting to kill Modi. Don’t forget that he even killed many on the same pretext. The “kidnapping” of and rape and torture and murder of Kauser bibi wife Sohrabbudin is nothing less than the extraordinary rendition. Both were incarcerated in private farm houses before being brutally killed.
There were bomb blasts in Malegaon of Maharashtra and Modasa of Gujart at the same time on September 29, 2008 on the eve of Id. People were killed and injured but the kind of professional and dedicated investigation that Hemant Karkare made was not matched by KK Mysorewalla. This notorious police officer of Gujarat has earned the distinction of having his sentence denying help to hapless Muslim women victims at Naroda Patia making the headlines of Human Rights reports. He is still there, and so is Babu Bajrangi, thanks to Modi. If this is not polarization what is it then?
The cure to this malaise of polarization is to ensure that justice prevails and is also not delayed. The former cannot be assured by the kind of bills that Gujarat government passes cocking a snook at the central government or in defiance of civilized norms. The latter is impossible unless we wash our Augean stables. The kind of public prosecutors that Modi appointed and the judges that he changed frequently to get Bajrangi out of jail and the police officers to turn blind eye to his evil deeds are playing havoc with the unity and integrity of the country. For the larger good of the country what we need is to refurbish “the idea of justice”: “justice has much to do with everyone being treated fairly.” (Amartya Sen) Paying victims of pogroms half of what you pay for others because they are Muslims is not justice. Justice also has “to pay attention to the kind of lives people are actually able to lead.” What kind of lives people in refugee camps were leading in 2002 that made the prime minister of India feel shame and Modi feel no shame?
The great grandson of Babur was the last Mughal Bahadurshah Zafar. He pined for two feet wide land for his grave in the homeland which he and his ancestors adopted. That wish of Zafar the British did not allow to take shape as they executed him in Rangoon. The fate of Wali Gujrati was worse. The hordes of Hindutva under Modi dispensation dug out his mortal remains and paved the shrine with hot mixture in minutes and left no trace that such a poet ever lived there! Which land in square meters will Judge BJ Sethna of the proposed commission measure to find out the polarization?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Lock Step Conformity of America
It is pitiful to note that the United States mocks its own Yankee pragmatism when it comes to the Palestinians and women. This is even more pronounced in the days of the administration of President Barack Obama.
From the day his aides removed Muslim women in hijab from a photo session to his highly exceptionable silence over the detention of former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and others by Israel he smacks of a Democratic pretender. The boat the Spirit of Humanity was seized on June 30 and 21 people abducted and kept in prison and released on July 5. The Americans who spent their July 4th Independence Day in Israeli jail were Cynthia, Adam Shapiro, a film maker, and Kathy Sheetz, a nurse and film maker. The UN rapporteur Richard Falk called the seizure unlawful and the Israeli blockade of Gaza a continuing crime against humanity.
During his election campaign he facilely accepted the resignation of Samantha Power. She was ‘forced’ to leave the campaign not because she had said that America opposes genocide one day and yet it defends it the very next day in the UN but for calling Hillary Clinton a bitch in an informal situation. The former is very often repeated when it comes to the genocidal policies and practices of Israel. Such is the lock step conformity of all the US administrations vis-à-vis Israel that one wonders whether it is Israel which is running America. This is true despite the fact that Obama rules the United States of America and not the United States of Israel.
The Democratic party is known for its concern for the minorities and intellectuals. It is also true that the Americans are still not ripe enough to have a woman president. Why had the hijab of a couple of women in a crowd posed any danger that the head scarf-ed women were removed from the scene, and they his admirers! In this the Americans are not what in another context Martin Kingsley calls fully evolved society.
Many events that have taken place over the years poignantly bear this out. An American white Christian woman protesting Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses was crushed to death by a bulldozer. It did not cause any ripple in the water of frigidity of the American conscience. The then president of the US did not bother to make any statement. On the other hand when Somali pirates kidnapped a private US citizen Obama sent American bombers to rescue him.
More appalling than anything is the most savage system of imprisonment in Israel. How failed is Israel as a state is exemplified by the awful prison of Ramle, one of the gulags of our time. There are people there who have not committed any crimes and do not know whether they would be ever released. Many of them are from Arab countries and have no legal help and embassy contact as they are denied both. Their being “trapped in despair” is the reason why they so raptly hear the lectures of Captain Denis Healey who tried to take humanitarian aid to Gaza in his ship, DIGNITY. They also want to learn navigation and sail on the blue waters of the deep seas around the world rather than waste their life in the Israeli prison. Will their dream ever come true! There are the proud Ethiopians who ended up there in their search for a better life!
One can only hope against hope that things would turn for the good of all. The imprisonment of Cynthia McKinney and Mairead Maguire shows that the silence of Obama and his administration is an eloquent confession of how the closest and most reliable ally, Israel, practices the grossest violation of human rights and dignity. The US record was tarnished by its invasion of Iraq and the notorious Abu Gharib prison and the Guantanamo detention centre and the ill famed extraordinary rendition. Further, its record is made murkier by its close association with Israel and its complicity in what Israel is doing. Or else why are Obama and the mainstream media silent over the Cynthia McKinney affair.
She along with 21 others had taken token humanitarian help to Gaza which included food, medicine, crayon and cement, etc. Speaking symbolically and connotatively she remarked: “The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza.” “Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.”
Let alone debating and contesting the import of such soul searing indictment, the government of America and the media have maintained deliberate studied indifference to the whole affair. They are so much under the thralldom of the Jewish lobby! However the moment they hear the Zionist twitter on ‘holocaust’ and ‘never again’, they begin to chirp and look over their shoulders to see that others have noted their chirp.
The Israelis had looted all of the belongings of those who sailed in the boat along with the humanitarian aid. The hijacked were forced to borrow an old phone from somewhere in the prison from another prisoner to send their message. Cynthia’s Independence Day message makes the celebration ceremony a parody of the truth.
The enforced silence on certain matters is so jealously maintained that there is a total black out on them. Only now has the US army accepted that Israel has nuclear weapons though it was known to almost every country in the Middle East as well as the world thanks to Mordechai Vanunu. Behind the towering walls in occupied land Israel is drilling for oil. This is a plausible truth of our time. Will the world also wait for half a dozen decades for the US government to officially find it out and acknowledge it as true?
From the day his aides removed Muslim women in hijab from a photo session to his highly exceptionable silence over the detention of former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and others by Israel he smacks of a Democratic pretender. The boat the Spirit of Humanity was seized on June 30 and 21 people abducted and kept in prison and released on July 5. The Americans who spent their July 4th Independence Day in Israeli jail were Cynthia, Adam Shapiro, a film maker, and Kathy Sheetz, a nurse and film maker. The UN rapporteur Richard Falk called the seizure unlawful and the Israeli blockade of Gaza a continuing crime against humanity.
During his election campaign he facilely accepted the resignation of Samantha Power. She was ‘forced’ to leave the campaign not because she had said that America opposes genocide one day and yet it defends it the very next day in the UN but for calling Hillary Clinton a bitch in an informal situation. The former is very often repeated when it comes to the genocidal policies and practices of Israel. Such is the lock step conformity of all the US administrations vis-à-vis Israel that one wonders whether it is Israel which is running America. This is true despite the fact that Obama rules the United States of America and not the United States of Israel.
The Democratic party is known for its concern for the minorities and intellectuals. It is also true that the Americans are still not ripe enough to have a woman president. Why had the hijab of a couple of women in a crowd posed any danger that the head scarf-ed women were removed from the scene, and they his admirers! In this the Americans are not what in another context Martin Kingsley calls fully evolved society.
Many events that have taken place over the years poignantly bear this out. An American white Christian woman protesting Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses was crushed to death by a bulldozer. It did not cause any ripple in the water of frigidity of the American conscience. The then president of the US did not bother to make any statement. On the other hand when Somali pirates kidnapped a private US citizen Obama sent American bombers to rescue him.
More appalling than anything is the most savage system of imprisonment in Israel. How failed is Israel as a state is exemplified by the awful prison of Ramle, one of the gulags of our time. There are people there who have not committed any crimes and do not know whether they would be ever released. Many of them are from Arab countries and have no legal help and embassy contact as they are denied both. Their being “trapped in despair” is the reason why they so raptly hear the lectures of Captain Denis Healey who tried to take humanitarian aid to Gaza in his ship, DIGNITY. They also want to learn navigation and sail on the blue waters of the deep seas around the world rather than waste their life in the Israeli prison. Will their dream ever come true! There are the proud Ethiopians who ended up there in their search for a better life!
One can only hope against hope that things would turn for the good of all. The imprisonment of Cynthia McKinney and Mairead Maguire shows that the silence of Obama and his administration is an eloquent confession of how the closest and most reliable ally, Israel, practices the grossest violation of human rights and dignity. The US record was tarnished by its invasion of Iraq and the notorious Abu Gharib prison and the Guantanamo detention centre and the ill famed extraordinary rendition. Further, its record is made murkier by its close association with Israel and its complicity in what Israel is doing. Or else why are Obama and the mainstream media silent over the Cynthia McKinney affair.
She along with 21 others had taken token humanitarian help to Gaza which included food, medicine, crayon and cement, etc. Speaking symbolically and connotatively she remarked: “The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza.” “Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.”
Let alone debating and contesting the import of such soul searing indictment, the government of America and the media have maintained deliberate studied indifference to the whole affair. They are so much under the thralldom of the Jewish lobby! However the moment they hear the Zionist twitter on ‘holocaust’ and ‘never again’, they begin to chirp and look over their shoulders to see that others have noted their chirp.
The Israelis had looted all of the belongings of those who sailed in the boat along with the humanitarian aid. The hijacked were forced to borrow an old phone from somewhere in the prison from another prisoner to send their message. Cynthia’s Independence Day message makes the celebration ceremony a parody of the truth.
The enforced silence on certain matters is so jealously maintained that there is a total black out on them. Only now has the US army accepted that Israel has nuclear weapons though it was known to almost every country in the Middle East as well as the world thanks to Mordechai Vanunu. Behind the towering walls in occupied land Israel is drilling for oil. This is a plausible truth of our time. Will the world also wait for half a dozen decades for the US government to officially find it out and acknowledge it as true?
Friday, July 3, 2009
Obama and BJP: Political expectations and expediency
There is always an appreciable gap between expectations and expediency in the world of politics. The Obama speech to Islamic world and the Indian election results are two manifestations of the same truth. L.K.Advani and others who endorsed the candidacy of Varun Gandhi expected correctly that it would give rich dividends to him. Of course it did as he won the election. The Presidential address made some people euphoric as they were taken in by the spur of the moment and thought that it made a watershed in the troubled history of how the Americans had been dealing with the Muslims for more than a century before 9/11.
When excitement of the moment gives way to cool reasoning things appear different from what they purportedly say. Many who heard President Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg could not understand him because before the hubbub of the audience subsided he had ended his speech and his voice was quite low. It was only when the speech appeared in printed form the next day they discovered how some of the golden virtues of democracy were enshrined through the power of speech. That single speech did not eradicate slavery lock, stock and barrel. But it was an important decorative gem in the rich mosaic of truthful words matched by strong action and tenacity to remain firm in one’s views and dealings. President Barack Obama on the other hand made instantaneous impression but the true import began to register in the minds of the audience slowly. Neither his most questionable silence over the way the Israelis used his induction as the president to punish the Gazans at will and time of their choosing nor his refusal to even rap their knuckles anytime subsequently (including the Israeli piracy of the ship carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza sent by six time member of the US Congress Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and others) fit in any rich mosaic of wise words accompanied by firm actions.
It was good to hear him accosting the audience in their familiar putative greetings, emphasis on his middle name Hussein, his being brought up in Indonesia rather than Saudi Arabia. Many were soon aghast at the too much circumspect references to the Palestinians which ended with a clear concern for the security of Israel rather than the opposition to the Israeli aggression repeated ad absurdum.
As Obama cannot pull himself out of the orbit of the political set up in his country, in India both the major parties have their own rotation and revolution again determined by the political set up here. Why did Advani and his party support Varun Gandhi? They knew quite well that what he had uttered was the unequivocal truth of their personal and collective conviction of their reason of existence as a political force in this country. That is their oxygen. Labeling soft or hard tags will not make any change anyway. It is this that has powered them to let anyone questioning their commitment to Hindutva know that he is free to leave the party rather than cast aspersion on their conviction. That is not negotiable and explains why on reaching the Goa conclave in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 Prime Minister Vajpayee not only chose to back Modi but find fault with the Muslims who ala Huntington do not cohabit the planet well with their neighbours.
That is also the reason why Congress and BJP choose to look the other way when it comes to this essentialism. BJP MLA Fatesinh Chauhan of Rajgarh was named an accused in the loot and arson of property of and attacks on Muslims in Devgarh Bharia in 2002. He got elected in the notorious election of that year and ‘absconded’ as he was declared a ‘wanted’ in the post Godhra carnage as Babu Bajrangi has been doing the same, off and on. Chauhan had called Sonia Gandhi a ‘kutri’(a bitch) and a ‘vandri’ (a she monkey) during electioneering in November. This time the Congress leaders opted to act not out of their any concern for the plight of the Muslims as victims of the pogroms but to show how seriously they took the slur to their leader. Their expectation would bring rich rewards to them and the expediency of the election officer JR Nanavati in lodging complaint would fructify.
There are people in India who flaunt their being politically incorrect as a badge of honour (Obama needs some more lessons in Islam. Tavleen Singh. Indian Express. June 7, 2009). One such has called the American president to be wary of wahabism. She expects that he take lessons in dealing with Islam from Indians! Her feeling is that we Indians lived in “our happy heathen atmosphere” “till Saudi money started to fund Wahabi Islam.” Such a naiveté in expectation is like carrying coal to New Castle as the United States has been governed and shaped by the puritan founders of the colonies; they condemned revelry as the work of the devil. In one single year Judge Hawthorne had sentenced more than two dozen women to be burnt at the stake for no fault of theirs but for their mumbling as a result of old age which the puritans took as their uttering the name of Satan! In what way have the wahabis dented the pagan pleasures of India? Some expect too much from the Americans and look for whatever opportunity comes in hand as expediency to show others their place in the country that is home to all its citizens.
The political right in India share with their counter parts in the US and Israel some implausible articles of faith which see nemesis rather than remedy as solution to the besetting problems. The words of Obama that some “measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s” is double edged and can cut both the ways equally.
No doubt that Islam rejects the free and easy ways of the West for its licentiousness and promiscuity among many other signs of decadence. But Islam is quite firm and clear that your religion is with you and mine with me and there is no compulsion in religion. Given this as the governing thought of Islam the rejection of hijab by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Obama embracing the right of the Muslim vis-à-vis hijab is the concern of two different groups of the Western stream of thought. Their concern is extraneous to Islam as a religion. It may also happen that these two sides would (ex)change their position if their political expediency becomes so emergent at a future time.
Therefore jumping on any bandwagon in a hurry in great expectation is the expediency for a short term gain but is fraught with danger. India made that mistake in regards to terrorism only to realize that its bête noire Pakistan is also on the same side with the Americans. This would mean the Arnold-ian situation of ignorant armies clashing in the dark of the night.
But such is the extremism of the right that the hijab appears as the “danger of Islam” to Bal Thackeray. His expediency of shouting alarm over religion in danger has been played so often and so much that whether Indian leaders are really “thakela and pakela” (tired and bored) is difficult to say, but he is, and this mind set is the result of it.
When excitement of the moment gives way to cool reasoning things appear different from what they purportedly say. Many who heard President Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg could not understand him because before the hubbub of the audience subsided he had ended his speech and his voice was quite low. It was only when the speech appeared in printed form the next day they discovered how some of the golden virtues of democracy were enshrined through the power of speech. That single speech did not eradicate slavery lock, stock and barrel. But it was an important decorative gem in the rich mosaic of truthful words matched by strong action and tenacity to remain firm in one’s views and dealings. President Barack Obama on the other hand made instantaneous impression but the true import began to register in the minds of the audience slowly. Neither his most questionable silence over the way the Israelis used his induction as the president to punish the Gazans at will and time of their choosing nor his refusal to even rap their knuckles anytime subsequently (including the Israeli piracy of the ship carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza sent by six time member of the US Congress Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and others) fit in any rich mosaic of wise words accompanied by firm actions.
It was good to hear him accosting the audience in their familiar putative greetings, emphasis on his middle name Hussein, his being brought up in Indonesia rather than Saudi Arabia. Many were soon aghast at the too much circumspect references to the Palestinians which ended with a clear concern for the security of Israel rather than the opposition to the Israeli aggression repeated ad absurdum.
As Obama cannot pull himself out of the orbit of the political set up in his country, in India both the major parties have their own rotation and revolution again determined by the political set up here. Why did Advani and his party support Varun Gandhi? They knew quite well that what he had uttered was the unequivocal truth of their personal and collective conviction of their reason of existence as a political force in this country. That is their oxygen. Labeling soft or hard tags will not make any change anyway. It is this that has powered them to let anyone questioning their commitment to Hindutva know that he is free to leave the party rather than cast aspersion on their conviction. That is not negotiable and explains why on reaching the Goa conclave in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 Prime Minister Vajpayee not only chose to back Modi but find fault with the Muslims who ala Huntington do not cohabit the planet well with their neighbours.
That is also the reason why Congress and BJP choose to look the other way when it comes to this essentialism. BJP MLA Fatesinh Chauhan of Rajgarh was named an accused in the loot and arson of property of and attacks on Muslims in Devgarh Bharia in 2002. He got elected in the notorious election of that year and ‘absconded’ as he was declared a ‘wanted’ in the post Godhra carnage as Babu Bajrangi has been doing the same, off and on. Chauhan had called Sonia Gandhi a ‘kutri’(a bitch) and a ‘vandri’ (a she monkey) during electioneering in November. This time the Congress leaders opted to act not out of their any concern for the plight of the Muslims as victims of the pogroms but to show how seriously they took the slur to their leader. Their expectation would bring rich rewards to them and the expediency of the election officer JR Nanavati in lodging complaint would fructify.
There are people in India who flaunt their being politically incorrect as a badge of honour (Obama needs some more lessons in Islam. Tavleen Singh. Indian Express. June 7, 2009). One such has called the American president to be wary of wahabism. She expects that he take lessons in dealing with Islam from Indians! Her feeling is that we Indians lived in “our happy heathen atmosphere” “till Saudi money started to fund Wahabi Islam.” Such a naiveté in expectation is like carrying coal to New Castle as the United States has been governed and shaped by the puritan founders of the colonies; they condemned revelry as the work of the devil. In one single year Judge Hawthorne had sentenced more than two dozen women to be burnt at the stake for no fault of theirs but for their mumbling as a result of old age which the puritans took as their uttering the name of Satan! In what way have the wahabis dented the pagan pleasures of India? Some expect too much from the Americans and look for whatever opportunity comes in hand as expediency to show others their place in the country that is home to all its citizens.
The political right in India share with their counter parts in the US and Israel some implausible articles of faith which see nemesis rather than remedy as solution to the besetting problems. The words of Obama that some “measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s” is double edged and can cut both the ways equally.
No doubt that Islam rejects the free and easy ways of the West for its licentiousness and promiscuity among many other signs of decadence. But Islam is quite firm and clear that your religion is with you and mine with me and there is no compulsion in religion. Given this as the governing thought of Islam the rejection of hijab by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Obama embracing the right of the Muslim vis-à-vis hijab is the concern of two different groups of the Western stream of thought. Their concern is extraneous to Islam as a religion. It may also happen that these two sides would (ex)change their position if their political expediency becomes so emergent at a future time.
Therefore jumping on any bandwagon in a hurry in great expectation is the expediency for a short term gain but is fraught with danger. India made that mistake in regards to terrorism only to realize that its bête noire Pakistan is also on the same side with the Americans. This would mean the Arnold-ian situation of ignorant armies clashing in the dark of the night.
But such is the extremism of the right that the hijab appears as the “danger of Islam” to Bal Thackeray. His expediency of shouting alarm over religion in danger has been played so often and so much that whether Indian leaders are really “thakela and pakela” (tired and bored) is difficult to say, but he is, and this mind set is the result of it.
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