"They (Muslims) must have the first claim on resources."
We Hindus are back to being second-class citizens in our own country, The minorities (read Muslims) have priority in everything - the country's resources, education, wealth, opportunities - everything. If any of us had dared to say this aloud before yesterday, the pseudo-secularists would have shouted him down. There would have been howls of protests from the Left and the Congress and the person who said it would have been labelled immediately as a "rabid Hindu, fascist, fanatic, communalist, obscurantist, etc. etc." And these are only the printable names he would have been called. But the cat is now out of the bag. The Prime Minister of India, no less, the Honourable Manmohan Singh,has declared in a public speech that the minorities take priority. Period.At one stroke fifty-nine years of independence have come to nought and we Hindus are back to being what we were for a thousand years before 1947 - inconsequential slaves about whom the rulers do not care two hoots. We are back to the days of Aurangzeb and the hated 'jizia' tax. Once again, to be born a Hindu in India is a crime.
Yet again, it is our own fault. We elected a government where the power behind the throne is a Catholic foreigner, the figurehead Prime Minister is a Sikh and the President, a Muslim. We were gullible enough to believe that this was a symbol of our 'tolerance', our 'secularism', our 'assimilative culture'. We proved that we have learnt nothing from the multiple Muslim invasions of our land, from centuries of Muslim and British rule, from Mir Jaffar and Plassey. We continued to bury our heads in the sand. Like the Bourbons, we have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.We continued to be our own worst enemies, to fiddle while our hard-won independence was undermined. It is our somnolence, our refusal to stand up for our rights, our pusillanimity that has emboldened Mr.Manmohan Singh to go public with his government's so far hidden anti-majority agenda.
The response to this most outrageous of statements by the Prime Minister has been even more shocking. The television news channels, otherwise always on the hunt for 'Breaking news', have barely mentioned it in passing, devoting far more time to the latest film gossip. The newspaper I read,DNA, had a front page headline and article about how the corporate world is unable to find good CEOs. Manmohan's missile was hidden away on page 7. Blink and you'll miss it.The channels have no time for serious issues and are slaves to TRPs.The print media is in the hands of Leftists and government toadies.The internet and the blogosphere is probably our last chance. Let us at least raise our voices of protest here. Before they are silenced forever.
5 comments:
Hi Milind,
I am surprised at your knee-jerk response to this statement of the PM. Do not really follow the Indian news so closely but I would like to know the context in which the pm made this statement.
You may choose to call it a "knee-jerk response". I feel it is more a reaction to what has been long suspected and has now been officially confirmed. As far as the context goes, how does that matter? The point is not the context in which he said it but the fact that he said it at all. If you're interested in the full text of the speech, the 'Daily News & Analysis' carried the full text yesterday. Here's the link - http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1068723
Perhaps on this issue we may have to agree to disagree but I stand by what I wrote.
Milind,
Thank you for the link.
I would still like to understand the position from which you are protesting this anti-majority stand of Manmohan Singh. I don't know how much prominence the Rajinder Sachar Committee's report on Muslims has got in Indian political debate but I just read a synopsis of it and to me it seemed that MS's announcement was a follow-up on this. Here are a couple of links to two articles that I found useful.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20061215004700400.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/29/news/india.php?page=1
@ mmuk2004 :
The Sachar report has generated a lot of ( predictable ) heat and dust in India on both sides of the political divide. The politicians have lined up as you would expect. But what is alarming is the ground-level muttering and anger which the mainstream media (especially the India success story- and Page 3- obsessed English language media ) and the politicians have chosen to ignore. This report has the potential to become a bomb far worse than the Mandal report. As with that report this one will now become a tool in the hands of both parties for years to come, and whatever the action taken ( or not taken ) on it will harm the nation and the polity irreparably. In India, once such battle-lines are drawn they are impossible to erase. I have no idea about your political leanings but one thing is certain, that distance lends enchantment to the view. I, too, was a non-resident for a fair bit of time and am, therefore well aware from personal experience that from that distance, these problems seem sometimes trivial, and one can feel that people back home are making a mountain out of a molehill. I assure you, when one is back here for good, one begins to see the scars and blemishes far better. Issues which seemed small take on a larger than life, frightening shape.
About the links you've provided, the first is from Frontline magazine, whose leanings are well known. Frontline and Outlook magazines carry about as much credibility on these issues for the average Hindu in the street as articles in the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, would carry with the Muslims, Communists, and the Congress. The IHT report is just a reporter's filed story on the Sachar report.
Sachar himself is a known anti-majority PUCL acivist. As an example of his general point of view see this link - http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Religion-communalism/prayers.htm
The tone of his writing says it all. Note that this article is from 1999, way before this report was even dreamt of. To get a feel of general opinion on his current production, see http://mboard.rediff.com/board/board.php?boardid=news2006dec01sachar1&page=1
Seven pages of comments on the Rediff message board. Look through it at your leisure and you'll get a feel of the mood on the street.
I am more surprised that people do not understand the so called secularist of India even after 60 years of Independence. Indeed, even Muslims and Terrorists do not believe Manmohansing and his promises as much the Hindus. Still Hindus in India believe that one can win the heart of Muslims or the votes of Muslims by feeding them unnecessorily.
Isn't it a thing to worry? I think, India need equal attitude with every religion and best way to work out is to imply Common Civil Code.
Post a Comment