@mech
@Bang Galore
@Prometheus
The mistake is yours. You are trying to oppose the hysteria of this right-wing lunatic fringe with reasonable arguments. They don't want reasonable arguments. They want an end to pseudo-secularism, which is code for stop pampering the Muslims; either they behave and toe the line given to them by the great gurus Savarkar and Golwalkar, or they are butchered and burnt alive. That's all they deserve, because right through the 12th and 13th centuries, other murderous adventurers who were also Muslim butchered Hindus. It's payback time, and your arguments are just confusing the issue.
That's also why this equation game goes on. It's OK to murder Muslims, and to use the instruments of state power to do it, because the Congress did just the same thing in 84. If the Congress hadn't committed this ethnic genocide, it would have been necessary to invent the episode, so that Modi's murderous betrayal of his constitutional oath when taking office could be justified, as is being justified now. Two wrongs make a right in their book, and nothing you say is going to penetrate their indoctrinated consciousness.
It's also OK to accept Gujarat state government propaganda as the living truth, the word according to scripture, despite numerous concerned voices pointing out that between hype and reality there is a wide gulf, because that in the eyes of the SanghParivar and its fellow-travellers, wipes out the crime of genocide immediately. India needs development, not democracy, and Modi is giving a part of India development; of course he is, he is saying so himself, isn't he? and never mind democracy. There is always a child-like belief within each of us that it is the other guy who will be the victim of discrimination, never I, and that is what drives the right-wing lunatics; they are all sure that they are such self-evident assets to society that they will endure and survive any kind of dictatorship and authoritarian rule that may come about, so let's have that rule. Someone else will have to pay, after all, not they.
For similar reasons, everybody else is on the wrong side of history. It's obvious to them that the pseudo-secularism of the Congress, which is clearly a fact of life, has to be replaced, not with genuine secularism as in France, but with the one-sided oppression of the minorities that has been the hallmark of BJP governments everywhere: in Orissa, in Chhatisgarh, where they couldn't have bargained for the tight slap in the face that they got from the Supreme Court, in Madhya Pradesh, in Karnataka, and - need anyone add? - Gujarat, which is now a toxic state. And in spite of that , these teeny-boppers think that they will get a better bargain in Modi and his collection of gaol-birds.
Anyone who doesn't agree with this political programme is either a pseudo-secularist Congress supporter, or a leftist; there is no room in their political analysis for liberals, none whatsoever. Nobody talked to them about liberals; they don't know how to react, so like the dumb examination candidate who had memorised an essay on the cow and was asked to write about admirals, they point out that admiral sounds like animal, cows are animals, and here follows an useful and instructive essay on the cow. Right. No liberals, please; we don't recognise those animals, so please come forward as a Congressman or as a leftist, or even a Muslim will do, Pakistani or otherwise; you are then fair game.
There must be a reason for this. My own theory is that the reason for our virulent form of Hinduism, that is so hugely different from the universal, confident version that Vivekananda and others of his epoch preached, is a feeling of vulnerability and uncertainty that has crept into Hindus. This feeling is fanned, deliberately, to keep people of such nervous and insecure mental dispositions always inclined to search for a saviour in the Man on Horseback of allegory, a masterful, strong figure who will set all wrongs right, with neither mental nor physical effort required of the people. Just read the majority of the posts and the picture emerges clearly. It is the insecurity in this generation which needs to be assuaged. They need a father-figure, somebody who picks them, kisses their bruises, assures them that they will get jobs without half trying, because the world will flood India with jobs due to sheer gratitude for the magnificence of Indian civilisation, that they will get the most modern, most shiny new weapons and quell Pakistan and China with these bright, shiny toys, and, of course, needless to add, in a bitter reversal of the comical Pakistani position of earlier years, it is no longer one Pakistani soldier equal to ten Indians; the boot is now on the other foot, pseudo-secularists have been chased away, and it is now safe to say that one Indian soldier is equal to ten Pakistanis - and you can throw in four or five Chinese as well.
Raman's initial appreciation of the situation is a pathetic piece of apologising for a murderer who is losing his ground one inexorable court judgement at a time, but it is being given far too much air by our local fascist babas, who think that the answer to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Baba is not the power of the people exercised responsibly but their replacement by Mohan Uncle and by NaMo Bhaiyya or Varun Baba.
Inevitably anything that you say, for that matter, this post, will be received by howls of outrage. The invective and sneering has begun. Without doubt it will continue; there is no substance in their stands to substitute for those ad hominem attacks. Personally, rather than respond to each childish rejoinder, it seems to me to be better to accumulate the bile until tomorrow morning and answer them together.
