Victims of Secularism

Whew! That was really a looooooonnnng break from blogging! Got tied up in various things.... Anyways, what triggered this post was an excellent comment on an article that I was reading. The article has been written by Shashank Joshi, immediately after the terror attacks in Mumbai in July 2011. He claims that while the fingers are being pointed to Indian outfits, Pakistan still cannot be let off the hook as the ISI and its agents feed this terror in the country. While he has a point, he still goes on to the usual defence of why the Islamic network has flourished in India, post Babri and post Gujarat! So why am I talking about this article now, after so may months?

Well, a comment on this article by someone who calls himself "Marty Martel" exactly voices my thoughts. I reproduce the comment verbatim below...

India’s secular seclusion and a hara-kiri

Indians have nobody to blame but themselves for this Islamic terrorism because they reelected Sonia Gandhi’s Congress government in 2009 that thrives on pandering to Muslim minority at the expense of Hindu majority.

Under their policy of aligning with Muslim political parties, Sonia-Singh’s government tolerated Islamic jihadis who have turned peaceful India into their terror base. The Islamic jihadis have advocated, incited and abetted unlawful activities to “liberate Kashmir from India” and to encourage “hatred and contempt” towards the Government of India. The various terror-related incidents in India since 2005 were not stray cases of “misplaced anger of Muslim youth”, as certain activists would want the world to believe, but acts of violence carried out with meticulous planning with the diabolic intention of turning the whole country into the terror hub.

India, which has been at the receiving end of jihadi violence for centuries (since 712AD), is in deep slumber ... secular slumber. India, predominantly Hindu and targeted by the terrorists precisely for that reason remains suspended in secular seclusion! Any association of terror with the religion of a minority is taboo even when it is glaringly apparent and any invocation of Hindu culture or religion is dubbed communal even when it could actually strengthen India, as a rallying point.

It does not seem to occur to Indians that for them to be secular, they have to be alive first! So as bombs go off in crowded places with chilling regularity, a Pavlovian spirit of slavishness, slip-shod logic and self-defeating tolerance takes grip of everyone.

From the public to prime-time pundits to pen-pushers of the print to politicos, all are coy, confused and confounded about how to react.

The stoic leaders exhort the nation to be calm, as if it were raring to bark and bite like Bush. The media waxes eloquent on the country's resilience in the face of terror, forgetting that bombs or no bombs, those alive have to go to work for their daily bread. The world sheds tears and then advises restraint, a virtue they themselves have shelved in similar situations, while the killers for their part start preparing for their next brutal assault, cocksure that they can pick and choose their targets so sedated by secularism.

Add to that the imposed guilt of Babri Masjid and Gujarat being drilled into the Indian psyche day in and day out by rational intellectuals amidst the masses and the media, much to the Jihadis’ joy. Should Hindus not be paying an eternal price for those sins? Were not the Jihadis just lambs before that, tolerant to boot and lovers of 'kafirs'? What delusions!

Really, in a country inhabited and led by mere men of straw, no provocation can truly become the last straw.

Barring announcing themselves through neon signs, the Islamic terror network in India and specifically in Kerala, is as conspicuous as an over-bearing mother-in-law! Yet, the long arm of our law remains folded, in secular deference to minority sentiments. Even when it is apparent that the so-called moderates in them have no voice.

Government authorities are politically inhibited from raiding the numerous mohallas of terror right under their own noses! On the contrary, the rulers bend over backwards with bouquets of reservations and what not in a wishful fit of appeasement, reminiscent of a sheep's optimism when faced by wolves.

Now does a nation, so committed to hara-kiri, really need any other enemies?

POTA or Abracadabra?

Terrorist attacks come and go and we are back to the same tapes being replayed. The BJP has once again demanded the revival of POTA, while the PM has rejected Mr. Advani’s appeal. His logic is, “The attacks on parliament and Akshardham temple took place when Pota was in force. There is no dearth of laws in the country to deal with terrorism”.

Oh Mr. PM, is it? But the fact is none of those laws seem to be having any impact. For the record, the attack on Parliament took place on December 13, 2001 and the POTA was notified only on 28.03.2002.

Even this apart, no law is magic that you enact it and lo! The terrorist attacks stop. If the PM thinks like this, something is seriously wrong with his intelligence. Or is it that he thinks we are all stupid?

Laws like POTA need to be in place for a long period of time, they have to be implemented with a single minded determination to weed out terrorists, sleeper cells, informers, etc. This will take some time, it will involve some excesses, but it will be far less than the number of innocent lives lost in terrorist attacks.

Fatwa against terror: Naive or Stupid?

I cannot understand if these people are naive or stupid or too clever by half!

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Some Muslim gent or organisation has to just murmur "Religion of Peace" and these cheerleaders begin their act from the sidelines. They begin their blah-blah about how this peaceful religion is being tarnished by Sangh Parivar elements and so on. And Mr. Dharker goes to the extent of lamenting that the fatwa has not been well publicised. This, despite the leftist newspaper Hindu saying this.

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Arre baba, even if there is this so-called "fatwa against terror", do you think it will make even an iota of difference in the agenda of the terrorists? Whom are we fooling?