Political

People cannot jokes the way it should be taken because everyone of us are not sardars!

A Sardar joke is just that — a joke You will find more Sardars in jokes than in the entire state of Punjab — or so goes a Sardar joke.

And a very good one at that! There are very few communities in the world that have the courage to laugh at themselves. The Sikh community is one of them. It is not easy to laugh at oneself and also share the same joke the next instant — it is the result of self-realisation.

Amandeep Singh in the HT.

People create unnecessary confusion when they misquote or misunderstand ‘straight’ and ‘plain’ statements by politicians. It’s because politicians are the best jokers in this country and also have intellectual level higher than normal Indians. This exactly happened with George Fernandes when he claimed to the media that Mr. Vajpayee asked him not to touch the Bofor files. It seems that Mr. Vajapyee’s erudite joke was only understood and acted upon by Fernandes. He tried to share the same joke and make us laugh but alas! our mental ability doesn’t allow us to appreciate this ‘joke’.

So just when the media thought they had something interesting to delve into, Fernandes broke their heart. Perhaps the greatest controversy of 2007 was sadly a joke.

A DAY after his controversial remark on the Bofors issue that shocked the BJP leadership, NDA convenor George Fernandes on Sunday said that he had been misquoted and that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was “joking� when he told him not to touch the Bofors file.

 

Replying to a television reporter’s query in Dharamshala on Saturday, Fernandes said that the then PM had asked him to keep his hands off the file. However, a day later, he told mediapersons at his residence that his words had been taken out of context and he had actually referred to the file on purchase of new Bofors guns and spare parts in the aftermath of the Kargil war and not to any file related to investigation into the alleged payoffs in the Bofors deal.

The line in bold and italics is the joke. If you are not laughing now then there is some serious problem with you. Go get politicized or start taking laughing therapy.

BTW don’t link my first statement with my next paragraph or else you will end up making fool of yourself as the media did.

Source- HT

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Kanta ben, in Ahmedabad, lost her only son in the riots. She says that Muslims are not even worth keeping contact with. Firoze, a Muslim, and her son went out together but her son never returned back. Firoze has been absconding since.

Ahmed bhai, in Patna, lost his son few years ago. His son went out with his Hindu friends but was later found burnt to death in a remote location. Since his death the whole family is scared and they are planning to leave India forever.

A little girl, during the Gujarat pogrom, was praying that Amir Khan’s Lagaan shouldn’t win the Oscars as he is a Muslim.

Muslims are accused of supporting Pakistan in sports

Stories like these are so common. The bloody partition left the whole population too prejudiced against each other. Slightest of provocation cause riots. Deep down everyone’s heart lies this hatred towards the other religion. I could think of the following reasons-

1. British government’s deliberate distortion of history to depict Muslim rulers as hate mongers and destroyers of temples.

Eaton argues that British colonial historians were at pains to project the image of Muslim rulers as wholly oppressive and anti-Hindu, in order to present British rule as enlightened and civilized and thereby enlist Hindu support. For this they carefully selected from the earlier Persian chronicles those reports that glorified various Muslim Sultans as destroyers of temples and presented these as proof that Hindus and Muslims could not possibly live peacefully with each other without the presence of the British to rule over them to prevent them from massacring each other. Although some of these reports quoted in British texts were true, many others were simply the figment of the imagination of court chroniclers anxious to present their royal patrons as great champions of Islamic orthodoxy even if in actual fact these rulers were lax Muslims.[Yoginder Sikand]

This formed the basis of hatred towards Muslims. Hindus were already infuriated at being ruled by aliens for hundred of years and this image further added fuel to fire. Divide and Rule police was successful!

2. The bloody partition is still fresh in the minds of Indians. Thousands were killed in the riots that broke out during the partition. Stories of inhuman and barbaric tortures keep the hatred alive.

3. Politicians always wanted to exploit the situation for their advantage. VHP & RSS’s venomous speeches keep the Hindu hatred alive. Muslims, fortunately or unfortunately, still don’t have a political party of caliber of BJP which basically survives on this victimized mentality-

Muslims favour Pakistan and other Islamic countries based on religion, and they do not support India though they live in secular India. This is very obvious when India and Pakistan play cricket.

Muslims have support of underworld/Pakistan. This is visible from the kind of weapons were/are available to Muslims in riots, just look at the way Muslims carried out attack in last 10-15 years.
Attack on Hindus in a train near Godhra cannot be dismissed as attack by mobs, they were hundreds, not 10 or 20, and all were Muslims. If anyone says it was an accident, Gujaratis have nothing more to talk. Hindus and Muslims know well that legal system in India does not work. If one community hopes the system to catch and punish the guilty, nothing will happen and in future, the history will be repeated. The only way for survival is to fight back and attacker will think before attacking again.

4. Pakistan’s support to terrorists in Kashmir. Terrorism is the biggest allegation against Muslims all over the world. The attacks on Hindu temples and other blasts just widens the gap between the two communities. All Muslims are considered sympathizers to terrorists. Speedy judgement in case of a Muslim accused compared to slow, or no, action in case of arrest of Hindus accused of riots strengthens an Indian Muslim’s fear that India is definitely not a safe place to be in. I remember during the Gujarat pogrom a resident of chandi chowk remarked, “We are safe in here at least from the Bajrangis. Indian government can still kill us in air raid”

Indian Muslims are considered traitors. More here

This is a movie ‘Making of a Muslim Terrorist’ which won Best Documentary & Critic’s Choice at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, as well as the Wolfgang Staudte Award & Special Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

I know there are many other reason but I felt that the above ones are the most important. But the big question still remains unanswered, what’s the solution to this hatred? I request the readers to drop in their views regarding this issue. I thank you all for the support via comments, emails and scraps.

Part 1 and Part 2

As far as I can remember the news about the Godhra incident starting flashing in the morning of February 27th. It was a period when the news channels were slowly coming up. Aaj Tak was growing great guns and so were Star News and Zee News. Doordarshan, government run channel, was pushed to the background by the private channels so that meant there were no censors in the news items. It was left to the discretion of the dudes from US/UK to decide what’s best for us. Aaj Tak got all the publicity because it was marketed as India’s own channel. So our own Aaj Tak started flashing images from the train carnage uncensored. The blame was put on Muslims as they fell to the taunts of the returning Kar Sewaks and eventually burnt the train. My first reaction to the news was my utter shock at this inhuman punishment meted out after slightest of provocations. Even though independent fact finding teams have refuted this earlier claim and label it is a part of larger conspiracy of the state government, I am not getting into conspiracy theories.

We still had the same BPL TV but had shifted to Hazaribagh. I was 19 and was busy preparing for IIT-JEE. My brother had his final exams starting in few days so we couldn’t have taken the risk for an excursion. Most surprisingly my paranoid mom was totally not concerned about the gravity of the situation; she just rubbished the news as yet another case of religious fundamentalism by the Muslims. Situation had changed by 2002 as Muslim terrorism was on rise, it had moved out of Kashmir and such incidents were on the rise. I think this could have been the reason for her not reacting as she did during Barbri Masjid demolition. No one anticipated the kind of barbarism that was to follow.

We all had our eyes fixed to the TV set as that was the only source of news. As news of mob rioting started to come in, my parents started showing signs of concern. The nearest Muslim dominated area was a couple of miles away and this was decided to be our abode if riots break out in our locality. We lived in a central government maintained colony as my father occupied a high position in the central electricity department. We were so intermingled with our neighbours that any such reaction could never  have been imagined in the wildest our dreams. We used to visit each other’s place on Holi and Eids. We had so many invitations on Holi/Diwali that my father used to have a tough time managing his commitments. Everyone from our driver to housemaid, who were all hindus, were already a part of our lives. Our old driver ‘Muni Singh’ was much more than a driver to us. He was the driver who drove my mom to the nearest hospital, which was 100 kms away!, when this ‘sensitive boy’ came to this earth. Could he come now to burn us alive?

We were overwhelmed by the response we got from our neighbours (there were just 3 muslim families in the colony). We were assured of our security in case rioters take to the streets. Hooligans were already preparing for a treat but the elders calmed them down. Its usually the junk of the society who takes to rioting; people who are jobless as this offers them a perfect opportunity to vent out their anger. Ever wonder why women suffer the most? Its because those perverts get an opportunity to convert their sexual fantasies to reality. Who is going to stop them and particularly when the state police is with them.

And then the inevitable happened. An ex-MP of congress, Ehsan Jaferry, was burnt alive with his family. His wife and other members survived because they managed to hide. This came as a big shock to us and definitely a cause of worry as we were also in a similar position as they were in. I really can’t think of the reason because of which we decided to stay back. May be because of assurances and the fact that riots didn’t start in our town. Thankfully there were no major incidents of riots elsewhere in the country. This image to the left was the most highlighted at that time. He is a tailor who ran away from Ahmedabad to Calcutta. This image was shot in Calcutta but notice the fear in his eyes and expectedly so! There were men being burned live in front of women and children. Women being raped in front of their children. I cannot even imagine the kind of mental trauma it would have generated in my mind.

The riots lasted nearly a month. TV images of ground realities melted our hearts. My hatred for the Sangh Parivar grew beyond bounds. I never spoke out a word against them to my friends but still the tension during the talks was apparent. A fanatic even called once to express his pleasure at Muslims being butchered, he termed that as revenge. All these incidents left me with no hope of surviving in this country. The child within me was dead long back and I was about to kill the youth in me. If Muslims in India are destined to this then there is no point in whining to the government. Can’t we have our own army? Why are those morons at the OIC quiet? The repeated riots have shown that the Indian government can’t protect us. India was slowly becoming alien to me. All these cynicism at just being a spectator to the riots on TV, imagine how prejudiced someone actually effected would be!

The last part of this series will talk about this prejudiced mindset among Hindu and Muslim youth.

My immature mind was already corrupted by this communal feeling. I often wondered if we too will meet the same fate as other Muslims who perished in the riots. My mother lost her cousin in the Bengali-Bihari riots in Bangladesh. She told me that her cousin could save her daughter as she hid her below her saari who was later rescued by the police. At least I now have a hiding place in case of emergency!

The demographics are completely different in Bihar, my home state. Biharis are completely against Bengalis and this animosity has triggered riots several times. Basically this animosity is fueled by lack of education among local Biharis, which leads to unemployment among the locals, and thus Bengali, being highly educated, dominate the job market.

Even though some of my best friends in school happen to be Hindus, I never talked to them about this controversial issue. I even thought that they, being children and definitely not as sensitive as me, would pay no heed to these frivolous, in their eyes, happenings around them. The period between 1992 and 2002 has been peaceful as no major riot broke out in the country. There few minor incidents; I was in my hometown Biharshareef. We were returning from Friday prayer and suddenly we could see stones flying all around us, we were under attack from the local Hindus who were angry at some political issue. It was scary. Few stones even hit me but we were still running. Within few minutes there was cross-pelting of the stones from the Muslims and things were then even. Police soon dropped in, thanks to Laloo’s able administration as far as containment of riots are concerned, to bring the situation under control. Such sporadic incidents plagued the country for years before 2002.

I left home after my 10th for a better school, which meant I had to live alone away from home for the first time in my life. And there I met a Hindu family which I will remember all my life for the care and affection they bestowed on me. I hate to categorize people based on their religion but as I am dealing with this cancer then I have to, sorry about that. One night few RSS workers came to my room, unaware that I am a Muslim, to distribute pamphlets for one of their gatherings in the city. I quietly listened to them and even let them paste one of their banners on the window pane. I wasn’t scared but wondered how they would have reacted if I told them that I am a Muslim. In the morning I saw uncle scrubbing off the banner from the window pane. My respect grew multi-folds for him. During my 2 years of stay there, I was known by the name ‘sunny’ and not my real name for obvious reasons.

I always tried to put aside this communal feeling and the tense atmosphere I was growing under because it would have further caused prejudice in my mind.  At times I used to feel victimized at being a Muslim in India. But those scars of 1992 were erased, at least from my mind, in the coming years. 

I will next talk about the Gujarat riots.