While The Cattle Burned In Godhra ...

Some myths take time to get busted; but they do get busted. This is a pic from the Slutwalk in New York in 2011. The poster a woman is carrying may shock you. At the bottom left corner of the poster is a self-caricature of the man who is often credited with inventing modern-day pop music. Yes, “Woman is the nigger of the world” was written and sung by John Lennon who also founded The Beatles. When the song was released it naturally sparked a controversy but those who protested realised quickly that it was a very pro-feminist song and not an insult to women. At other times, using the word “nigger” can have serious consequences across the world. In due course, the US Organization for Women awarded Lennon a "Positive Image of Women" citation for the song. After Christopher Hitchens, who lampooned Mother Teresa’s missionary work, there is lately another research by Canadians which states she was anything but a saint. It suggests that Mother Teresa was a “media-created saint” (see TOI report).

One such myth floating around is Shashi Tharoor (ST), the Honourable Minister, as an “intellectual”. I first closely observed Tharoor during a debate he had with Christopher Hitchens on ‘free speech’. I believe that was the first time ST too ran into a “real” intellectual and was schooled by Hitchens. I summarised the work of Tharoor, the happy-tongue hypocrite, in a post 3 years ago. Nothing has changed since then for me to assess him any differently. I was naturally curious when my Twitter friend Utsav Mitra put out this tweet on March 1. I guess ST was just furthering the Congress agenda of the TwitterNREGA programme when he started following people he would otherwise never have followed. These are a few Congress supporters on Twitter. Remember all the gaffes of ST? His “Nehru’s moral running commentary”. “Saudi Arabia as interlocutor” for Indo-Pak issues and most of all the “cattle class” remark, are all legends. In short, all of these would suggest ST is nothing more than Sushilkumar Shinde in a suit and speaking fluent English.

All his utterances plus his IPL misadventure cost him his ministerial job earlier. So ST in his second innings as a minister found the ultimate tactic to survive in Congress politics as a minister. And that is to frequently write about Narendra Modi and tar Gujarat. Now, as a politician ST is entitled to criticise and rubbish Modi as much as he wants and also proclaim Modi is unfit to be PM as he now writes in some papers. Nothing endears a politician to our media and the Congress party like a man targeting Modi. ST has learnt his lessons well. But when it comes to talking about riots and Jihad, ST proves he is not very different from Teesta Setalvad (TS). TS and ST! Let’s deviate from Mr.Happy-Tongue a bit. Let’s find out what Teesta is harvesting.

A report in DeshGujarat, and in many other news sites, has reproduced a letter written by residents of Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad to TS. The letter accuses TS of having collected over 1.5 crores for some purpose in the name of the Gujarat 2002 riots victims. After feeling fooled by her for all these years, the residents have now demanded the amount be distributed among them and the victims of the riots. In a separate letter, Gulberg residents have also asked the Police Commissioner not to allow any NGO crooks near them anymore. You can read the whole story in the link provided. There is hardly any doubt left that TS was a scavenger who enriched herself playing the saviour for riot victims. She’s not the only one many others too have enriched themselves. Some of them are prominent media celebs whose faces you see on your TV screens or newspapers every single day. Most of them have also received many awards, including Padma awards. The TS tactics of success are essential for progress under Congress and “Sickular hypocrites”. Any surprise why ST pays more attention to Gujarat and Narendra Modi now?

So in response to a query over an article concerning Narendra Modi ST sent out this tweet on February 28, 2013. This is line with the TS School of Success in Politics programme. This also partly borrows from the Digvijaya Singh School of stupidity, Asad Owaisi School of radicalisation and Sushil Shinde School of excuses for Jihad. I wonder if ST got a call from Hafiz Sayeed yet. If not, he will find praises from Hafiz ‘Saab’ pretty soon. Remember, both Digvijaya and Owaisi maintain the Babri demolition was the first advertisement for Jihad and Gujarat 2002 the second. We now wait for Owaisi’s ‘third wave’. Let’s forget that Jihad has existed and killed millions for 15 centuries across the world. Let’s forget that Pakis have promised a “1000-year Jihad” against India decades ago. It is futile to ask people like ST to see sense.

What ST forgets is that his tweet dangerously paints the Muslim community as a thoroughly violent community capable of no civilised response to violent events. What ST implies is that Hindus must and are capable of tolerating all kinds of atrocities and remain peaceful despite grave provocation. Okay, fine! But what he does miss is that he insults the entire Muslim community by implying that the only response they are capable of is Jihad. He confirms that Muslims are incapable of responding to communal riots with anything other than Jihad. By his own twisted logic Godhra was advertisement for the riots that followed. That’s your intellectual in a suit. That’s what brings me to ST’s cattle class nonsense. Remember how he justified it? No? Alright, we’ll get there.

Since Akhilesh Yadav took over UP CM there have been at least 9 communal riots as reported by CNN-IBN. So what did CNN-IBN do? They nominated him as “Indian of the year”. ST would agree since in most of those riots Hindus were victims and the media kept quiet. Er… Hindus didn’t see the advertisement. Hindu houses were burnt and razed to the ground sometime back in Deganga. Hindus all over talked about it, media supressed reports but Hindus didn’t get together and declare “jihad”. Oops… they didn’t see the ads. Recently, there have been communal riots in Canning (Bengal) and yet again Hindus were victims. Oh, they didn’t retaliate, they didn’t see the advertisement. Incidentally, Hindus are again being killed in Bangladesh but I’m sure Hindus in India or ST didn’t see any ads. Did they? Muslims have been so misguided and misled by certain leaders that they have been led to believe that the only way to respond to even events unrelated to India is through violence and jihad. Remember Azad Maidan? That orgy of violence was based on fake images. I believe ST would justify those images as “advertisement for jihad”. ST stereotypes them by implying Muslims are incapable of any other response. And Muslims gladly suffer such insults to their community and to their intelligence. It is leaders like ST whose utterances permanently keeps Muslims on the edge and leads them to believe Jihad is the only answer.

The stupid justification that ST offered for his cattle class is that he has lived abroad for 30 years and it’s a common joke for the way airlines treat passengers. Should I say, swell? I doubt ST had the gall to refer to anyone as cattle class while he lived abroad like John Lennon had the guts to call a woman a nigger in his song. In each case Mr.ST the context is important. Your cattle class is airline economy class, in India cattle class would be S-6 in Sabarmati Express. Even if it were a ‘western’ joke, the context in India is vastly different. India is a country where a huge majority has never flown in an aircraft much less experience bad treatment from airline companies. I doubt ST has ever travelled on Indian Railway train. Has he? I don’t know but let’s assume he has. If he has indeed ever travelled on an Indian train he wouldn’t have missed the fact the second class and general compartments are packed with people like they would normally be packed with ST’s cattle.  Even in reserved second class compartments there are crowds during a day journey. During the night there are encroachers who sleep on the floor.

So all that ST has done is join the huge gang that sees only Muslims having died in Gujarat 2002. It’s a very rewarding industry as a retired judge or many NGO crooks will tell you. For all these people, the 59 people who were burnt alive and were roasted to death were just cattle class who were stuffed in a train compartment. ST probably wasn’t in India when Godhra happened. In all probability those 59 who burned to death invited their deaths by advertising the name of Lord Ram by their chants. Right Mr.ST?  I haven’t seen one tweet from Shashi Tharoor about the Godhra burning when he mentions Gujarat 2002. Well why should he tweet about that, he has nothing but contempt for holy cows, doesn’t he?