Men of straw

THE TIMES OF INDIA
22 March, 2011

Tarun Vijay

Face it squarely. All should have welcomed handing over the cases related to any kind of terror to NIA. Who cares? Anyone belonging to any colour, if found violating the Constitution should be brought to book. The best statement on it came from RSS stalwart and an icon of serving the destitute and the disadvantaged, Bhayyaji Joshi, who assured all help to the government to have such cases investigated. But the state power had some other ideas.

Was the real intention of a government that lies to the nation on WikiLeaks cables and survives, as Arun Jaitley put it aptly, on a political sin, honest?

This government facilitates traitors as simply as that. And punishes patriots in the hope that it would get some Muslim votes.

Look how a secessionist Geelani is facilitated in Delhi, given a platform to demand India's second partition and then allowed to stay on at the expense of Indians to participate in Pakistan Day, at the house of Pakistan's high commissioner in Delhi.

Afzal’s hanging is delayed deliberately to ensure Muslim votes. WikiLeaks cables, sent to Washington by American diplomats, corroborate what every sane Indian believes.

So is the case of handing over cases involving one set of people. The government of Lilliputians wants to prove something that must fetch it some Muslim votes.

They never tried to send the cases of ULFA, or NSCN, or Geelani-Arundhati Roy, or stone pelters of the valley who attacked the security personnel, to NIA. Never pursued the wealth looters who stashed their black money in Swiss banks.

That would have not fetched them what they wanted.

They treated Gujarat as an enemy country, mocked at its investment claims, as if money poring into Gujarat was meant for Pakistan. And now MP is on their list of assaults for obvious reasons.

One of their leaders shows a chestful of currency notes to a foreign diplomat. Nothing happens and the Prime Minister of the nation tries to obfuscate the issue.

Even Berlusconi appears more honest than our ruling elite.

A news story emanating from Srinagar, sent by a national news agency, said that there is an “allegation” that a Hindu temple has been ransacked and taken over by a mafia and a Hindu organization has demanded a CBI probe into that. Oh, too obliged that someone thought that this is news worth any notice. A brief mention, no name of the organization that demanded a probe, no name of the place where the temple was "allegedly" desecrated and no name of the leader of the Hindus who took up the cause, braving bullets.

Replace the term "Hindu temple" with the name of any other faith's place of worship and see the difference.

It pays to be a non-Hindu in this Hindu-majority nation.

Who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs where taking up a Hindu cause needs enveloping it in a secular parlance?

Where even the supposedly Hindu nationalists are shy of saying the word “Hindu” and a government, administration and the media empires led by those who still wear a Hindu name, feel hesitant to come out in support of justice and fair play, lest they should be “misunderstood” as being communal?

In a situation when temples are desecrated without creating a whimper in the capital and the Prime Minister gleefully hands over small apartments to Hindu refugees in their own independent country without saying a single word of assurance that they would someday go back home and a political opposition, barring a few exceptions keeps mum on the main player of all sinful activities that is tearing apart the society and its core, thanks should be given to a Assange and a Leftist editor, to keep the salt of democracy intact. In such times choosing to publish the cables means braving grave risk to his media empire when most of the brave hearts in media have turned “durbaris”.

Frankly, it may not be the case that the state power has chosen Hindus as its target –every patriot, every honest pursuer of policy and programmes feels let down today. A great nation that boasted of being the knowledge hub of the universe has become a billboard of the most corrupt land, while China has surpassed even the US in manufacturing.

We are nowhere near its economic prowess and military might. From shielding the corrupt and lying to Parliament, all such charges which were unimaginable till recently are flying on the face of our Prime Minister.

The aura is gone and men of straw seem to be holding a fort of sand.

This situation demands self-introspection by the Hindu leaders too. They have turned into mere observers and protesters. The UPA began its journey with the removal of the Savarkar plaque from Port Blair memorial and continued with assaults of the bridge that Rama built, keeping eyes wide shut on Kashmiri Hindus while pursuing a brazenly discriminatory appeasement policy for non-Hindus. If Hindus find themselves at such a receiving end, the blame must be borne by the leaders who claim they are Hindus. The entire babalog fraternity, and the so-called sirens, they are very rich and influential individually but a great failure collectively. They enjoy a power-packed list of devotees. Performing miracles. Running huge chains of colleges and “gau shalas”.

Just ask them what was the last issue they won for the Hindus? Driven by jealousies, hatred for each other, a killing spirit that survives on “unchecked” eavesdropping, and an uncanny intolerance of the intellectual inputs , the Hindus seem to be failing the Hindu cause once again, post-Ayodhya movement.

They chose not to answer the inconvenient issues of caste-based discriminations, keeping a silence on incidences like Mirchpur. They never addressed the issue why in India none of the so-called mainstream newspapers has been able to have a single scheduled caste editor or why no scheduled caste leadership is finding its way up the ladder in administration, industry and in any policy-framing group, in spite of being in a majority within the Hindu population of the country? Ironically except the RSS, none is besieged of the issue.

There are Hindus in the Congress and the DMK and the SP, the BSP too. Where is the concern for any Hindu cause among them?

When an MLA from Pakistan fled to India to protect his religious freedom, who spoke for him? Who supports the issue of taking on the main player of all that’s wrong in politics today? Why the eerie silence? The nation will, one day discuss the most horrendous case of backstabbing in our political life. Targeting Hindus is like targeting the last bastion of liberty and plurality. And it’s not being done by Arabs or Turks, but by India-born Hindus.

The temples and the gods are the same who were there when Karachi, Rawalpindi and Kabul were deserted. The men who had to flee those places leaving behind their gods unattended find their partners in today’s leadership that goes on sermonising on religious channels every morning. Just bubbles.

The same way, our honorable Prime Minister has failed the nation like a failed father. He has missed the bus of courage and forgotten that individuals are smaller than national interest and that history is necessarily very ruthless.