I am sick and tired of Modi Bhakts going on, and on, and on about how our dear leader is beyond reproach because the Muslims did it first, Pakistan started it, the West is a jerk.
Who says that Godhra is forgotten? Where did these people get that idea from? The only reason it isn't as relevant in today's news is because those people who committed it are not the Prime Minister of India today. Nobody's forgotten anything.
It was an act of terror. It was horrifying and terrible, and is recognized as such.
My Hindu uncle in the train didn't do anything. But neither did my Muslim aunt in Ahmedabad. And the man who let it happen is sitting in the PM's chair today, and that is why we talk about it more than we do about Godhra. It doesn't imply that anything has been forgotten or mis-remembered. It's about the relevance in the present context.
And I'll very politely ask you too look up how many fatwas have been issued against terrorism, acts of maiming and murder, and terrorists, and terror groups. They condemn it. It's not covered by the media that's in the business of propaganda. Now, I don't know if you are indeed ignorant of how deeply and widely Muslims condemn terrorism, or if you've deliberately chosen to close your eyes to knowledge that goes against what you've been taught, that Muslims are either terrorists, or if not, they support it, or if not, they don't speak against it.
They do. It's merely not covered by popular media.
Now I'd like to divert you to the recent attacks towards the end of Ramadan in Turkey, Bangladesh, Mecca etc. The terrorists have a certain awful interpretation of the Koran, and the Muslims who disagree are targeted just as much as the rest of us are. And they are harassed, and punished worse cause they are held more responsible for their betrayal.
Also, you will kindly notice that most Muslim majority countries aren't republics. They are run by vicious, fundamentalist dictators, and you are very, very deeply mistaken if you think for a second that the subjects of these autocratic nations have any liberty to speak up, or enjoy any rights to free speech, and press.
The statements of the despotic kings are released to the world, the words and sentiments of their greater public aren't. Let's not blame an oppressed people for not 'condemning', when we really have no information about their real thoughts and feelings.
Terrorism does not have a religion. Neither is terrorism a modern invention. In the medieval ages, most terrorists were Christians, and now they happen to be Muslims.
But they truly have no religion. They have no God. They are terribly misled and morally bankrupt people with schizoid tendencies.
You are spreading a message of hate, when you blame it on Islam. There are billions of Muslims who are peace loving, generous , and lead kind lives; in far greater numbers than all the terrorists combined.
You do not win by fighting hate with hate. And this attitude of blaming and persecuting people who are blameless only helps the terrorists who then have the opportunity to say "See we told you that they hate you. They will always treat you different, never accept you. You will never be loved, so come join our side, and let's get rid of these people who are ill-treating you."
And thus, it's this attitude and rhetoric that turns more people into terrorists than anything that they themselves do to recruit. And we become responsible for creating monsters through our hate.
And it's not enough to shout from rooftops about what a wonderful country India is, and what a great man Gandhi was and so on and so forth, if we never in reality embrace the concept of love, and fighting with kindness.
And finally terror attacks aren't on top of any fatal cause lists. It's mostly propaganda and fear mongering by the press and the politicians. And a little discretion is in order to not get carried away on this pretend wave of hate and fear.
A lot of 'terror attacks' are performed by white supremacists, neo nazis, psychopaths, bullied & harassed spirits, police authority, and extremist right wing people. They just don't happen to get as much press coverage.
I urge you to be more vigilant about the news you believe, the circumstances of the people and the worlds they live in, and practice enough kindness and discretion to see what's really going on, and mull over it long, and deep, and not give in to being spoon fed by selfish, greedy agencies that have a strong interest in making sheep of all people.
An eye for an eye does make the world blind. And no, a blind world is not acceptable. There's this thing called called 'humanity', and there's a desperate need to keep it alive.
That being said, in this particular context, it's not an eye for an eye but a hand for an eye, a heart for an eye, a foot for an eye, an ear for an eye... It makes no sense.
Banning starving refugees and refugee
children because ISIS operates from near there, and so we are going to punish these innocent people and leave them to die makes no sense. Just as little sense as killing innocent Muslims who have been living in Gujarat forever because a radical group of terrorists decided to murder a compartment full of Hindu pilgrims.
It is not us versus them. It's never been Muslims versus Hindus, Blacks versus Whites, Germans versus Jews. I know that's what it looks like and how tempting it is to believe that, but we need to have more discretion than it. It is good people versus bad people. That's what it's always been.
We have a great number of Muslim jawans, young men who fight and die to protect you, to protect us. How do you think he feels when his sister is raped and his father is set on fire because some bad people who also happen to be Muslim, did some awful stuff to a hand full of Hindus.
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME PEOPLE.
Just as all Hindus aren't Shivsena and Ramsena, all Christians aren't mass shooters and Fort Williamsburg Church members ; in that EXACT same way all Muslims are not bad people, and are most definitely not all terrorists.
As far as reservations and affirmative actions are concerned, there are far more reservations and crutches in place for SC, ST, and OBC categories than for Muslim, Christian and Parsi minorities.
It's a constitutional loophole, we need to take it to the government.
Politicians use these reservations as bait for getting the minority vote. This too needs to be taken up with the government. The people who are showered with these advantages, by professional politicians who want to further their careers, are not to be blamed for the actions of their constituency leaders.
I'm all in favor of the mandal commission opposition. At this stage I refuse to believe that anyone- Hindu SC, OBC, Muslim, Parsi - need any kind of reservations. And most definitely not after one has acquired a basic graduation degree. I do not, however, differentiate and say give it to Hindu lower castes, but withhold it from religious minorities. I do not buy into those biases, nor do I have any patience for morons who can't see how biased that stance is.
This is exactly the kind of attitude that let the British and Jinnah divide and rule, what led to the partition massacre. This is the kind of dangerous sentimentality that urgently needs to be curbed if our species is to survive into the next century.
There are ever so many Muslim philanthropists, activists, nurses, aides who aren't talked about. A label has been slapped on the entire community, and people are flared by hate speeches and partisan information into saying something as heinous as what you said yesterday, that they had it coming, that they deserved the inhuman crimes leveled against them, because of what a very small part of their religious community has been involved in.
And before we make these terrible statements, and worse, believe them, we need to look at this from a personal standpoint, slip our feet into their shoes. Now imagine that India were a Muslim majority nation (as opposed to a Hindu majority nation) , and almost 90% of our major leaders are all Muslim. Now imagine that a small renegade group of extremist Hindus kill a train full of Muslims returning from Mecca. It's a heinous crime committed by a group of misled, brainwashed, hate-filled Hindus whom you have nothing, at all, to do with.
Now the Muslims in your city decide to hate and hold all Hindus accountable for the crime of a few who have already fled and are living in comfort somewhere. The mob mentality (psyche) prompts these Muslims into attacking your borough. They start hacking your relatives with a machete, gang rape your sisters and mother, set fire to your house, behead your father, and leave all these corpses to rot in garbage heaps.
What can you do? Whom do you look to for help, for aid? Your police, your government. You plead and beg for help before more horror spreads through your community. And now imagine the guy who's supposed to have your back (whom you, along with your Muslim neighbors voted into the Chief Minister's chair), the guy you look to for help and protection merely turns his head away, refuses to lend state help and as a leader wielding immense power buys into this extremely unfair rhetoric that you are to be held personally responsible for something you didn't even know was happening. The fact that you are a good person who in fact, had friends, neighbors, and loved ones on that train.
When your protector believes that you, your family and friends need to suffer unnameable atrocities as an example so that Hindu terror groups get scared and don't repeat their actions, think how effective that is going to be.
Psychotic people don't care about any 'examples'.
Always think things through in terms of your family and loved ones, and you will mostly be able to see what's right, and what's wrong.
And now if you still want to hate people based on their religion, race, and other attributes they were born into, then please think about whether that makes you a good person or a bad person.
And finally please do think about how willing you are to sacrifice your loved ones so that a few extremists in your community can see their persecution, and gory murder, and MAYBE stop their evil activities.
There's no 'other side' that I need to listen to. There are no excuses people can make to justify murder. There is no us and them. And when your stray from the path of humanity, and stoop to the level of a terrorist, that makes one a bad person. And if one buys the arguments in favor of human versus human, that makes one foolish in addition to bad, hot-headed, gullible and not all that different from the people one indignantly condemns.
