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?
