Responding to Sagarika Ghosh, the journalist known to post fake riot tweets and then deleting them post outrage seems to be a useless waste of time. The lies in her writings makes us wonder why we do not call her troll instead of those who take on her lies. It really is a useless exercise. One cannot attribute lack of understanding to what she writes. She has vested interest in writing what she writes, even if it is full of hatred and lies. There is no innocence in such repeats. Still I am writing.
Why do I write? I do not write to educate her. She is well educated. She knows that what she writes has more holes than the mosquito-nets one uses in the summers. Still she writes and she writes magnificent junk which could compete with the works of CS Lewis, if the intent was not so mischievous. I write in the hope of few who read this post will be forewarned and with expectation that the unsuspecting might not consider her profile as a Journalist as some kind of proof of authenticity of what she writes. So, the Hindu – Hater and Hindu-baiter, Ms. Ghosh wrote “Is the Hindu a Victim?” and she answers herself – No.
It takes an absolutely hardened of heart to write in the backdrop of painful death of hapless Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath in a terror attack in Kashmir and call the outrage emerging out as a response to it as ‘manufactured’ outrage. She is a woman with no heart who believes that anyone outraged on the killings of hapless Hindu pilgrims by Jihadi Islamists have vested interest in feeling thus. She mocks the tolerance of Hindus, who have been termed a docile race, never being an imperialistic religion, calling often used ‘suffering in silence’ phrase in reference to Hindus silently submitting to supremacist designs of expansionist religions as what she call ‘showporn’ line. I have not had the opportunity to attend Oxford like Macauley-Putri and cannot find the meaning of this word, even with some effort.
But then from context and tenor, I could gather it derides the contention of Hindus who have just seen some of their brethren killed in the land which has been wiped off the Hindus in 90s that they do suffer in silence. She scorns at it, derides it and laughs at it. Even knowing fully-well that such killing of Pilgrims while visiting holiest shrines will not cause disturbance or riots in a Hindu-majority nation, she discards the theory that Hindus suffer discrimination silently. She says that such terror attacks are used to put entire Muslim community on notice. So when Hindus are attacked, killed, she in some round-about way establishes a plank to project Muslims as victims. She is more pained at Muslims being made to feel guilty of the violence committed by Muslims against Hindus in the name of Islam, than she is at the act itself resulting in lost of life. A heartless person she is, she considers loss of reputation for Muslims a graver loss than loss of life of Hindus.
Then she picks out another card- that of victim-hood and hides behind the favorite refuge of the liberals- the west. And if you cannot find a decent thinker to hide behind, George Bush would do. So she quotes Bush’s statement that “India is a country which does not have a single Al-Qaida member in 150 Million Muslims”. Of all the people, it is interesting for a journalist, in the face of ISIS flags floating in Kashmir and Kerala, ISIS sympathizers being caught in India to quote such a fake statement from a fake statesman who lied about finding WMD and using it as a pretext to attack Iraq thereby giving birth to ISIS.
She then scoffs on insults heaped on Hindu faith, which has off late become an everyday affair. Those people who claimed that the french publication brought it upon itself by making cartoons derogatory of the Prophet, now claim that there is no reason for Hindus to feel slighted by deliberate trampling over Hindu faith. She quotes the case of Dhoni as Krishna, or what she calls ‘few minutes of Azaan’. She ignores the fact that in all these case people had approached the authorities and sought action.
In the case of latter, it was not even a Police compliant. It was merely a tweet by a singer, which invited Fatwas and huge outrage from Muslims. She has problem with the tweet not with the Fatwa. Even in all the cases she quotes, she comfortably ignores that Hindus, who constitute eighty percent of the population in India, merely knocked the doors for legal recourse available to them, rather then jumping into Azaad Maidan and trampling over and desecrating emblems of national pride placed in the memory of martyrs.
She forgives Muslim appeasement which has been the hallmark of Congress politics and which helped the only dictator we had in Indian history come back and settle a dynasty on the throne for the following generations. But she creates a bogey of Hindu appeasement. As usual there is no data to support that. She is always unperturbed with the dearth of facts. She does not need facts; she does not care for facts. She thrives on rhetoric, she enjoys metaphoric falsehood and hyperbole of dishonesty. That the Hindus are reaching out to the law when their faith is trampled is a fact she does not like.
Why don’t these people, she with satisfaction call “Internet Hindoos” (she takes pride in coining the term, rightly or wrongly, I would not know nor do I care) remain just that- Internet Hindus- unobtrusive, virtual inhabitants of virtual world. So when Hindus are asked to scientifically prove the veracity of their claims on Ram’s birthplace, or Calf which Hindus worship is slaughtered in mid-street, she would rather have Hindus keep quite and go their way, without making much noise which could cause quiver to her glass of champagne on quiet evenings in her posh dwellings.
She then quotes a BBC report of 2011 claiming that often Muslims are the victims in the terror incidents, which is such an absurd claim in itself. When you are talking of Hindu Victimhood, what is the relevance of this quote? Muslims are the victims of their terror is nothing new. It is not for nothing that Muharram is observed. Beneath the religious overtone, Islam is essentially a religion of empire. The wars began right after the demise of the prophet. There was no role that Hindus played in it. It was a power-struggle then, it is a power-struggle now. Also it is a very Pakistani line to take and is as hollow as Pakistan as a nation is. When terror activities happen in Pakistan, is it a surprise that Muslims die? Do they have any non-Muslims there to die in such sorry incidents? Where do all the non-Muslims disappear in a Muslim majority nation, and once they disappear it is hardly surprising that the victim of Muslim terror will also be Muslims.
She briefly shifts her vision to Bashirhat, probably as a deliberate attempt to create the fake image of neutrality. But reading on, one can hear Paul Newman speaking in the Tennessee Williams Drama “The Cat on A Hot Tin Roof”- “Be careful, lady, your claws are showing.” She, in half a sentence, covers the 65 years old man lynched in Bashirhat and the juvenile in jail for a Facebook post, as she says- “Equally nasty and sinister are fake pictures”. When the fake pictures have caused neither unrest nor violence, how can it be equated with real violence on the ground which left people dead and devastated, she does not pause and care to explain. She has gone unchecked, unquestioned for so long that she is hardly bothered.
She with a deft movement of her hands waves off the contention that Bengal has become a hotbed of Hindu hatred. She is a journalist. Facts must be forcing their way through the high walls of her villa. But she ignores them. She ignores that before Bashirhat, there was Malda; that the HC in Kolkata had come down heavy on the West Bengal government for indulging in Muslim appeasement. But what do the Honorable judge know which this enlightened soul does not?
She laments falling participation of Muslims in Indian Bureaucracy and politics. She presents Sachar Committee report as her argument. The objective of constituting the committee was always under cloud. Irrespective, she quotes the report of a committee constituted in 2005 and the report which dates back to 2006 to somehow implicate the new-rise of confident Hindus. She calls it muscular nationalism which slaps sedition charges on Muslims celebrating the victory of Pakistan, with Pakistani Flags. Pakistan is a nation which kills and mutilates our soldiers, and she calls those Muslims who celebrates an enemy nation as Victim of this muscular nationalism. I wonder what kind of nationalism Ms. Ghosh would have preferred- An effeminate, guilt-ridden, fumbling and fake nationalism which does not cry for its own and which cheers for those who kill and main its own? Would she rather prefer a nation which exists but considers its existence, its being, its history as a mistake from the past, an accident that one has to live with? She does not tell.
I must tell you Ms Ghosh the tale has taken a turn. This India, that is Bharat and that was Hindustan is proud of its today and its yesterday, however painful the past might be when a religion of majority was pushed to sideline, surviving at the mercy of minority, from Mughals to the British. The wheels have turned and cannot be turned back. Please learn to live with it. Hinduism, by the virtue of what it is, has tolerance and co-existence inherent to it. But it must not mean that Hindus must go down and fade into oblivion without a protest. Even the cases, she so cunningly present to demonstrate what she claims is militant face of Hinduism, only proves the intent and desire of Hindus to follow the law of the land.
Even today, as I write this, a Parliamentarian mocks and insults Hindu faith and all Hindus do is outrage on social media and explore legal recourse. No, Ms Ghosh however, bleak a picture you might want to paint, you will never find Hindus trampling over Tricolor and kicking the Memorial for the Martyrs. This is our nation, and we love it too much. This is the only nation we have, in case you have not noticed and we shall be as muscular as need be to defend it.
