Eminent Follies

It has been a convention in India for long. The moment the word “Eminent” gets attached to a person in political domain, it is invariably a license to peddle falsehoods and, in some cases, extreme concoctions of lies. Arun Shourie had to write a whole book called “Eminent Historians” to expose the falsehoods of many Commie historians. Some of these eminent historians also concocted fake stories about Ramjanbhoomi and Ayodhya to the Allahabad HC. Their testimony to the court was largely based on the “Salma-Sabrina” model of fact-checking when they were just quoting each other and had no first hand evidence of a mosque pre-existing at the disputed RJB site. To understand the nonsense of such “eminences” I recommend you understand their techniques of deception:  “Babri demolition: How HC verdict discredited 'eminent' historians” by Prof R Vaidyanathan. Our media and establishment had bestowed the title “Eminent” to another celebrity: Fali Nariman (FN). He is known as an “Eminent Jurist” or “Eminent constitutional expert”. One does not dispute his expertise on matters of law and Constitution but even Shobha De is a political expert, so…

The eminent FN recently gave a lecture to the National Commission for Minorities. The Indian Express reported it with the headline “Hinduism losing its benign face… no one at top stepping in”. To clarify, by “top” FN does mean Modi-Sarkar because Hindus otherwise don’t have anyone at the “top”. Maybe Shiva or Vishnu can be considered being at the “top” but Hindus don’t have a Pope or a Grand Mufti to tell them what to do. They are and have been an unorganised lot for ages. It is only in the last century that many Hindu organisations have sprung up but they too don’t constitute the “top”. Here are some samples and interpretations of his speech as reported by IE:

“But — recurrent instances of religious tension fanned by fanaticism and hate speech has shown that the Hindu tradition of tolerance is showing signs of strain. And let me say this frankly — my apprehension is that Hinduism is somehow changing its benign face because, and only because it is believed and proudly proclaimed by a few (and not contradicted by those at the top): that it is because of their faith and belief that HINDUS have been now put in the driving seat of governance… We have been hearing on television and reading in newspapers almost on a daily basis a tirade by one or more individuals or groups against one or another section of citizens who belong to a religious minority and the criticism has been that the majority government at the Centre has done nothing to stop this”.

Nariman lauded the role of the Supreme Court in upholding minority rights on many occasions, describing it as a “Super Minorities Commission”. However, he said, the judicial outlook has undergone gradual change since the early 1990s when the BJP introduced the phrase “appeasement of minorities” in the political lexicon… “The label stuck; ‘minority’ became and has become an unpopular word. And after the same political party had included in its Election Manifesto in the general election of May-June 1991 the party’s resolve if and when it came into power to amend Article 30 to the disadvantage of minorities, ‘minority rights’ got less and less protected by Courts (including the Supreme Court of India) than they were before”

Firstly, the term “minorities” in India has invariably come to mean Muslims. If at all the NCM or media or any govt speaks for any minority it has always been the Muslims. I have not heard anyone from the establishment speaking for Sikhs. Did you hear anyone screaming about Saharanpur? And that wasn’t under a govt of the Hindu “top”. You don’t hear the NCM or media talking about Jews or Parsis. FN slams his own legal community by stating that the “judicial outlook” changed when the BJP introduced the phrase “appeasement of minority” in the 1990s. So the SC is swayed by political statements? And they sort of prove FN is right, don’t they? This report on the SC’s comment on “Sickular” actions of the Centre suggests so (read report):

The SC has stressed repeatedly on something that the so-called “minority” wages war against. This is from the same report I just quoted: “In the last two decades, the Supreme Court had stressed time and again the importance of enacting a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as advised by the Constitution. Between the Shah Bano judgment in 1985, Sarla Mudgal judgment (1995) and John Vallamatom verdict in 2003, the court had thrice stressed the need for enacting a UCC, saying it would help forge national integration and remove dissimilarities”. I need not add that the “intolerant” Hindus have been unreasonably demanding this too. The UCC has been advised by the Constitution? Oh! But you see the Constitution doesn’t apply to certain communities who are being oppressed by Hindu fanatics. They have their own “Personal law board” which is superior to the Constitution. The “intolerant” Hindus refuse to see this fact.

The Indian Express drags in speeches of Yogi Adityanath to the context of FN’s speech. It does seem the Yogi has rattled the “Sickular” club. They don’t have any answers to questions he raises but keep referring to his speeches as “hate speech”. For instance, the Yogi consistently mentions rioting by Muslims anywhere, anytime for any reason even when there is no relevance to India but these “eminences” have no answer why. This is an enduring image from the Azad Maidan riots by Muslims:

The rioters destroyed a Jawan memorial, molested five female cops and two people were killed at Azad Maidan in August 2012. And Hindus have become intolerant? For giving speeches which the “Sickulars” judge as hate speeches? In response to the Azad Maidan riots a female cop, Sujata Patil, wrote a harsh, sarcastic poem and she was penalised and accused of fanning “communal hatred”. The “eminent” complainant against her hatred was one Nazar Mohammed Siddique, an accused arrested in the Azad Maidan violence case, who was allowed bail. This is what “Eminent Sickulars” call intolerance; that everyone should stand by and watch the unprovoked violence, destruction of national monuments and shut up. If they speak up, they are branded intolerant.

There is not an iota of truth in anything that Fali Nariman said. It is deception at best to an audience who just wanted to hear exactly the kind of speech he gave. They want that their “victimhood” be encouraged even as they refuse the recognise minority failures. Predictably, the stupid editor of DNA immediately pounced on the opportunity of FN’s folly to splurge on. DNA’s editor makes an interesting observation: “Far from the bogey of minority appeasement that the Hindu Right energetically propagates, a recent report compiled by the DGPs of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh warns of a gaping trust deficit building up among Muslims against the police forces”. It doesn’t occur to this editorialist that none of these states have a BJP or NDA govt. TN has never had an NDA/BJP govt. UP hasn’t had one in two decades. Maharashtra has had a Congress govt for almost 15 years. So the folly of this bogus argument is not evident to him. And for all this the “Hindu top management” is to blame? Whichever that is! Also, can this moron editor of DNA explain why the Maharashtra police was a mute witness to Azad Maidan? Or does he blame that on Modi-Sarkar?

What eminent celebrities like FN refuse and fail to recognise is that there is a widespread problem with “appeasement” of minorities (read Muslims) not just in India but in many parts of the world. There is unrest building in parts of UK and Europe. Anti-Muslim sentiment in the USA has peaked now. It is far higher than it was in the days immediately after 9/11:

That is not a poll conducted by Gallup or the “Hindu top”. That’s a poll by the Arab American Institute. How do our “sickulars” explain that? There are no conflicts in India between Hindus and Sikhs, Jews, Parsis, Christians or Jehovah’s Witness. There may have been stray ones in the past. So why is it always a Hindu-Muslim conflict? And if some “Hindu top” is responsible for “communalisation” one should ask the question: Who is the “Muslim top management”? The fact, as Najma Heptullah pointed out sometime back, is that Muslims are not “minorities” in this country anymore. They are no way comparable to other minority communities and in many towns and parts they are actually in majority or sizeable in population.

The recent floods in Kashmir have again revealed a regular behavioural pattern. The Army and NDRF were doing their best to help people and yet there were pockets where the rescue teams were pelted with stones and attacked. Ask our eminent Sickos to explain this behaviour and they won’t be able to. On the contrary, they foist a terrorist like Yasin Malik of JKLF as a “moderate” separatist and he is even reported to have hijacked a boat with food for flood victims. Here you go:

Yasin Malik is a darling at NDTV and other media houses. He is a darling of Commies like Suzy Roy and other Commie politicians. We are supposed to tolerant to such elements? I have to repeat what I posted about Karl Popper’s famous quote a long time ago:

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

That’s all there is to it. People like Shiv Aroor and Gaurav Sawant of Headlines Today are slowly starting to speak. Sickos can lie only so much. They call Yogi Adityanath a hate-monger because he moves around in saffron. In absence of any explanation to his questions they scream “polarisation, polarisation”. Wear a suit and a tie like the Fali Nariman types and get invited to annual lecture circuits and you will be hailed as a “Secular”. Lie long enough and they will prefix your name with “Eminent”. We have seen all of this before.