The media-politician anti-Hindu nexus has to stop immediately, if we really don’t want another 26/11

As I remained hooked on to Times Now (which, by far, gave the best coverage possible and reminded me of CNN’s Iraq war coverage way back in 1991), and without sleeping for a moment for the first twelve hours, saw the mockery of our democracy, I really felt sad for our brave policemen who gave up their lives – just like the many innocent people who also paid the price – for a non-committed, spineless, political class ruling this great country. Every time a political leader spoke, it was a feeling of shame that I felt somewhere deep within, and couldn’t help but wonder when we would see the end of this rotten, old and decaying lot who can sell this country to the dogs for a few hundred crores. It was indeed sad to see the nation pay the price for their uncommitted, visionless leadership. Haven’t we had enough of disgusting and shameless statements like ‘we are planning to modernize our equipments and increase budgets for our intelligence departments...’ etc? Forget having any kind of moral responsibility to resign instantly from ministerial posts after their sheer failure to protect the country time and again, they are such a bunch of illiterate and shameful individuals that they don’t even feel ashamed and embarrassed to come up and give those sickening and predictably stale, dated statements again and again.

And as I thought of the whys of 26/11, I couldn’t help but put the blame on our government’s virtual anti-Hindu sentiments, for all practical purposes not just today, but over years and years. Of course, I had been feeling this especially during the last fortnight and almost everyday, as I saw newspaper after newspaper devote endless newsprint to “Hindu terrorists” and “Hindu bombs”. In my entire life, I don’t remember reading even once any media house in India calling anyone a “Muslim terrorist” or any bomb a “Muslim bomb”; and rightly so... But the true or false revelation (of course, I believe that whether Hindu or Muslim, the guilty should be brought to law) of one rare exception of finding a Hindu behind an act of terrorism gave our entire ruling political class the freedom to instantly coin a new word called the Hindu bomb to malign Hinduism (and, but obviously, the BJP too with the elections round the corner). Well, it’s very easy to do so in India. That’s because Hindus are the people who, despite being the majority in Hindustan, are the people who can be abused in India and gotten away with. Because Hindus, in reality, aren’t terrorists or bomb makers and are supposed to be tolerant, patient and – dare I repeat what Gandhi said – even cowards! So Hindus can be abused in this country by every scheming political class wanting to garner the Muslim vote bank during elections. It’s not just that they can be tortured brutally (even women) by investigating agencies, but the fact is that for Hindu arrests, there aren’t even any human rights groups jumping in and creating farcical noises.

But that’s not all. Assisting the political class mostly willingly (and, at rare times, due to no alternative choice) in this conspiracy is almost the entire Indian media and its lot of fake and mostly half-educated journalist fraternity. Pampering Muslims blindly – even terrorists caught red handed – or their extremism all the time gives most media houses and journalists an illusion of large hearted (farcical) secularism. Some media houses have made it their business to support Muslim terrorists et al because then, there are crappy human rights groups around the world who fund them and praise them and give them awards by organising pseudo-intellectual seminars and gatherings. Of course, for those media houses that refuse to tow the government’s line of press release campaigns, the government would put tens of income tax, foreign exchange management, MRTP cases, etc., against them, so that to save their backsides, they start falling in line.

And pampering and useless tolerance of the wrongs of any community, when it comes to the nation’s security, is what is the sure recipe of 26/11s and the reason behind India’s fate today. This is exactly what doesn’t let governments in India take rightful actions. Because their fear all the time is that if a Muslim bomber is hanged, a Muslim terrorist is interrogated, a Muslim-majority locality is searched, either they will lose their vote banks or – according to their illiterate definitions of secularism – not remain ultra secular. And that is the difference between the USA and India. The Americans know how to differentiate facts from pseudo intellectualism. They have nothing against the Muslim world as such – nor have we ever had or should have – but they have decided not to tolerate Al Qaeda type of extremism. And once decided, they have the courage to go all out behind destroying the very roots of such organizations. And that’s the difference between a strong nation and a weak spineless nation full of opportunist politicians. A strong nation takes the right decisions and goes all out to implement it. A weak spineless nation just says ‘we will take strong action’, then does nothing; and given the first opportunity, creates new farcical terms like “Hindu bombs” through slavish media houses, in order to show how ‘secular’ their outlook is and to create a false air of alarm that even Hindus are creating similar terrorism... How utterly shameful!

How will a nation take strong action when no one has the courage to come out in the open and say the problem categorically and clearly? And every “Indian Muslim” will agree that every non-Indian and terrorism-believing anti-Indian (Muslim or Hindu) should be given the most ruthless punishment and should be pulled out from every hideout of theirs and thrown into jails, for “believing in democracy and secularism doesn’t mean compromising with the discipline and security of a nation.” No nation does it; and we should stop doing it right away. At The Sunday Indian, we have always believed in being logical and fair. If George Bush was wrong on Iraq, we repeatedly went behind him through all our magazines; and if we thought that there was logic in ‘Azaadi for Kashmir’, we went ahead and did a cover story on it... and with the same belief, today we assert that democracy and secularism cannot be maintained by starting a campaign branding a bomb made by some Hindu terrorist as a Hindu bomb. The pillars of democracy and secularism are about identifying ruthlessly – and without looking at religion – who are those who are time and again threatening this country’s security, and going behind them ruthlessly. And that’s when in peace we will know how to love people of all religions; and just like Dr. Zakir Hussain and Abdul Kalam in India, and Barack “Hussein” Obama in USA, one day we will proudly also have a Muslim prime minister and not even realise what his religion is – because, above everything, we all need to be Indians, and we all need to do everything possible to give that sense of Indianness pride and respectability. If 26/11 does not make us realise the need to do it, nothing ever will!