Sunday, September 14, 2008

Scary thoughts on the blasts

Lot is happening around the world, especially those which bother me like Ike, Georgia, Singur and to a bit even the US presidential elections. But this post, I would like to discuss the blasts happening in the Indian cities.

Yes, enough has been written about it, and various views. There are many topics to discuss on. They are:

1) What is government doing?

2) Is it justified to have an anti terrorism law like POTA

3) Is what was earlier known as the “Mumbai spirit” actually “Mumbai cowardice” or “Mumbai apathy”?

4) Should we begin to suspect all Muslims?

5) What do the terrorists really want?

Let us begin with the last question. I wish and I can just wish that they would tell me “We want azad Kashmir and nothing else.” If I had power, I would have immediately said “Yeh lo, and take this extra 1 square meter from ladakh too, and please stop this”. I wish it was as simple, and if it is, I urge the politicians please do this right away. But we all know that is not the case. I think the reason for the blasts has to be something else, and it might not be entirely based on reason, region or religion. It very well might be, they had nothing else to do. These big terrorist organizations, once found that everything is already ok in this world but they have these huge infrastructure established and they will go jobless if they do not do anything, started brainwashing people. And where else will they get such a large population to influence and to attack. Yes, Indonesia has the biggest Islamic population, but then they can’t create havoc there, because it is all Islam. India becomes a natural choice.

No I am not typecasting the religion, I am just typecasting terrorism. To sound more secular, let me bring out a Hindu example. What would VHP and Bajrang dal do if India was a Hindu nation?

Now this drives me to the next point. See how in he above explanation, I had to do Hindu bashing for the sake of sounding secular. This is what I am so concerned about and this is what Rajdeep has also discussed in his blog. Why do we have to do our own religion bashing just to sound secular? Even in common life, we consider a Muslim good if he is clean shaven, he takes part in festivals like diwali and holi alongwith Eid and he even goes to temple. We the Hindus say “See, that is how a Muslim should be, and see, how we accept such good Muslims to our society and we think we are tolerant hindus”. But that is not right. We should also respect a Muslim who does not want to participate in Holi or Diwali. Frankly speaking, Holi diwali are not even Hindu festivals, they are Indian festivals. How many Muslims do take part in the “Sathyanarayan katha”?

So now that we see that it is all about a change in mindset for all the people is needed, we look at what is the government doing for this? And the answer is obvious, not only nothing, but just the opposite. Ideally the government should have made conducive atmosphere for the peaceful co-existence of the two communities (which I think occurs more by naturally than by the government) and change the mindset of the young people through education. Considering that it is the government who designed the CBSE syllabus, I would say it was a job well done. So you see the government would have been actually helping the problem if it just stopped what it was doing but no, they just did the opposite. They started appeasing one community and thus actually creating differences between those who would have become an ally over time.

And now the most difficult question, so what can be done now? And I am afraid the answer is : I have no idea..

1 comment:

Advay said...

Well, the most touching line of the blog was the summary. Even the govt doesn't have a clue about how to go about it. I guess you missed the news of the terrorist attack on Manipur's CM's house. If they want they can even blow up a CM's house. India's biggest problem is the leadership. Unless we get a good leader and good politicians to run the show, we can't fight terror. So, wait until we get some good people who can run country honestly.