Riots revisited.

Here we are, Back to square one. We have another riot in Vadodara Gujrat. The press is up in arms, the central government is trying to attain political mileage and Mr. Modi- chief minister of Gujrat is probably preparing himself for another crucifixion. Last time I wrote a blog about communal riots I predicted that another set of riots are around the corner. In fact India had quite a few of them but Gujrat stands a special case. Supposedly ‘worst’ case of communal riots took place in Gujrat in 2002 and it was all BJP’s fault, all Mr. Modi’s fault perhaps, all Hindus fault. Right there - these so called secularist and primarily Indian press (which I believe is most phony and useless in the world. Probably, worst than Saudi Arabia! Bunch of retarded, degenerated and malnourished brains covering sensitive issues. For example, Shekhar Gupta, Dilip Padgaokar, Vir Sanghavi and our esteemed Pranoy Roy!) generalize riots in such a way that it makes me wonder whether organ called brain is missing among these journalist.

Let’s try to see riots through different prism. I am ready to accept that Mr. Modi is current Hitler and Gujrat is ‘laboratory’ of NAZI’s. Also, Hindu’s are most fanatic religion in the world bent of destroying peaceful minorities in India. Now let’s move to our beloved Muslim community of India. They are the victims here and they are living under constant threat of Hindu fundamentalism. There was an article published in Indian Express. According to that article (the article was on a survey conducted by Government of India) percentage of Muslim people finishing 12^th grade is lowest among all. This ration slips further when we talk about rural area. The story is same for percentage of Muslim people graduating with a degree. In fact, in completely different sphere, percentage of Muslim farmers using tractors is drastically lower than their Hindu counterpart. Why is it like that? Is it a deep Hindu conspiracy? I doubt that. Because, percentage of Muslim people getting loans from private sector as well as from government extremely low compared to their Hindu counterparts. It is almost impossible for private sector, government sector as well NGO’s to come together and conspire against Muslim community.

May be the reason is that Muslim community don’t want to get involved in mainstream. They have separate civil law. They want separate education system so they could study in Maddarasaas. It is not hard to join these dots and form a picture of current state of Muslim community in India. If India is moving ahead and a community is extremely stubborn to the point of being obstacle then it is easy to understand majority communities’ antipathy towards them. But saying such things is almost taboo in print & news media as well as in political arena. Such issues are never discussed in public sphere. Anyone talking about these issues (for example, problem of family planning in Muslim community) is quickly derogated as right wing Hindu fundamentalist. But even though there is no discussion in public arena, general populace do discuss these issues privately.

If Muslim community wants special treatment then they are getting it in every possible way.

Coming back to the riots - it is not a new phenomenon and it is not confined to Gujrat either. First riots were recorded in 1761. We had worst riots in Mumbai, in Bhivandi etc. The discussion about riots is extremely biased. For example when it comes to discussing riots in Gujrat in 2002, no one discusses the burning of 59 Hindus in Godhra. Press and politician conveniently sweeps that issue aside by blaming few miscreants for such a gruesome act. In fact they go to the length of blaming RSS for burning train and then starting riots. (One theory is that those people locked themselves in and then burnt the bogie from inside!) But Godhra has almost 30% Muslim population and it is perhaps, most riot prone area in Gujrat. It was under curfew for six months during 1947 partition riots. Plus, during 2002 Gujrat riots number of Hindus killed in riots were almost equal to number of Muslim killed. All these facts and circumstances are never mentioned in ‘main-stream’ press. And, even if they are mentioned they go unnoticed.

We need to have unbiased discussion in press about all these issues. What I see is that our press fast turning into American press. They want to cover issues with no discussion or meditation on it. Sadly, such a hypocrisy on Press’s part (I don’t expect anything from Indian politicians) sets the stage for another set of riots. I don’t intend to suggest that riots are good in any way. But we are not trying to solve the real problem here. Post riots - the blame game starts after that and we are back to square one.