Gandhians With a BUN

One patriot out of her love for India and social justice sometime back referred to Maoists as “Gandhians with a gun”! On the 1^st of January a few such patriots, with others, were at the Safdar Hashmi memorial organised by SAHMAT (The SH memorial trust). Most of the 150 participants linked the issue of M.F. Hussain with that of Arundhati Roy and Teesta Setalvad.

One founder of SAHMAT, Ram Rehman, is reported to have stated: “M.F. Husain as an issue does not end with M.F. Husain. His fate represents a process which is being used against writer Arundhati Roy and anti-communal riot activist Teesta Setalvad. The state forces in both Mumbai (Maharashtra) and Gujarat are mobilising again against Setalvad. She might be arrested any time on funny charges of exhumation of bodies of riot victims” Okay, so what’s the issue with M.F. Hussain?  Freedom of speech?  Freedom of expression? Or that some ‘right-wing’ Hindu groups filed cases against M.F. Hussain? To me, the real issue is a gutless coward self-exiled in Qatar who is unwilling to face the courts in India. But that’s about Hussain. Let’s come to the two others Arundhati Roy and Teesta Setalvad.

Both Arundhati and Teesta have come out against the life sentence handed out to Binayak Sen. As have many other communists, pseudo-secularists, liberals and those Gandhians with a BUN. Some ex judges too have questioned the sentence. Every one of them seems to think the evidence was a farce and the life sentence for Binayak even worse. As a strong supporter of free speech I do feel the sentence is excessively harsh, but I have no way to comment on the quality of evidence. All these communists and liberals seem to know everything about the evidence. Except that one poor guy, the judge who assessed the evidence and pronounced the sentence. Well, never mind Binayak even. The higher courts will deal him justice if he feels the lower court has failed him.

Arundhati and Teesta have cases pending against them for different reasons. The first  knows everything about everything from nuclear disasters, dams, azaadi and kashmiri problems, tribal problems, the Indian totalitarian state and patriotic Maoists who are just Gandhians with guns. The second, of course, is a warrior against communal riots. Both have one thing in common though – LIES! Both scream the most the most for truth and social justice. Both have had their knuckles rapped by the Supreme Court. The problem with Suzanne Arundhati Roy, like with other communists and liberals, is that she is bent upon twisting common sense to come up with emotional clap trap and dangerous untruths to defy anything. How else do you explain the following story?

Lies, lies and more lies by Vivek Gumaste: Writing about the Gujarat riots, Arundhati Roy had this to say (Outlook, May 6,2002).

A mob surrounded the house of ex-Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the director-general of police, the police commissioner, the chief secretary, the additional chief secretary (home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burnt them alive. Then they beheaded Jaffri and dismembered him.

The description is graphic; the veracity of the incident taken almost for granted coming from a writer of Arundhati Roy's reputation. But, alas, that's where we make the mistake. Fame and honesty are not interlinked as the following paragraph clearly indicates.

Jaffri was killed in the riots but his daughters were neither 'stripped' nor 'burnt alive.' T.A. Jafri, his son, in a front-page interview titled Nobody knew my father's house was the target (Asian Age, May 2, Delhi edition), says, "among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad. So if Ehsan Jaffri had only one daughter (singular) who was safe and sound in the US, where did Roy get her facts about not one, but daughters (plural) being stripped and burnt? Was it the fantasy of a writer's mind? Or was it willful deceit aimed at maligning her ideological adversaries?

Arundhati Roy did apologise for her mistake in a letter published in Outlook May 27, 2002. Could this have been a genuine mistake, one is tempted to ask? But when such 'mistakes' occur periodically, the chances of them being accidental appear remote. They appear to be in fact calculated machinations aimed at achieving a specific goal as the following incident further proves.

In the same article, Roy claims.

"Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved 'OM' on her forehead."

Disturbed by the thought of such a ghastly act, Balbir Punj (a BJP MP) had this matter investigated. In Outlook (Jul 08, 2002) he wrote. Shocked by this despicable 'incident,' I got in touch with the Gujarat Government. The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy's help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons. Why is she hedging behind technical excuses? So when asked to prove her allegations, Arundhati Roy developed cold feet; definitely not the attitude of a crusader for truth.

Not much has changed since Arundhati started journalistic pursuits around 1998. She later declared that the Pokhran-1 nuclear test in 1974 led to the imposition of Emergency in 1975. That should be a history lesson for all of us.  That is her style of adding bollywood type emotional drama with untruths to her writings and utterances. As for the other one, Teesta Setalvad, the SIT investigating the Gujarat riots has already exposed her lies and false affidavits. Her own cronies are now turning against her and the justice she so reveres will finally reach her.

I am all for absolute free speech, even if it sometimes borders on stupid ideas of sedition. Even if it is hate speech, even if it questions religions, even if it offends everyone. As long as it does not provoke or incite violence. But lie-mongering is not free speech. And our Gandhians with BUN know how to peddle lies and our media will gladly give these jerks a platform to do so.

CNN-IBN was the first to interview Arundhati Roy on the Binayak Sen sentence, offering her more space to vent her absurdities. Why not! After all Rajdeep Sardesai said it all about the killing of the Pakistani Governor Salman Taseer with a tweet:  “salman taseer loved his whiskey and his women. served me fine scotch in pakistan. was a liberal in an illiberal milieu.” Hmmm! Read more about that at Sandeepweb.

With Bun I am definitely not referring to the hairstyle of these ladies. BUN is ‘Blood Urea Nitrogen’ a waste that goes out of our body through the kidneys. I wonder when these Gandhians with BUN will be released from our national system. Terrible waste that they are!