02-13-2005, 06:09 AM
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?m...t&counter_img=3
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Why only Ahmedabad? Lets ban Kolkata too
Kanchan Gupta
There is something perverse about the manner in which attention continues to be focused on the 2002 riots in Gujarat, as if never before had communal violence taken a terrible toll of human life and property in India.If the rioting that followed the burning of Hindus by Muslim mobs at Godhra deserves unequivocal condemnation, do does the despicable manner in which that violence continues to be used for achieving political ends.
First, the Congress and the Left used the riots for pillorying chief minister Narendra Modi. Then the jholawalla brigade led by Teesta Setalvad made it into a judicial carnival (it now transpires that claimed affidavits from riot victims submitted in court were no more than printed pamphlets, but that is another story). During last year's general election, graphic visuals of the riots were used for mobilising Muslim votes; a cynical abuse of victims' misery that is being repeated in Bihar by Lalu Prasad Yadav.
We are now told that a member of prime minister Manmohan Singh's council of ministers has taken the liberty of discouraging the Pakistan Cricket Board from including Ahmedabad in the itinerary of the Pakistani team's forthcoming tour because playing in riot-tainted Gujarat is just not cricket. The Pakistanis, of course, have been more than happy to oblige the UPA worthy.
If communal violence must permanently tar a State's reputation and condemn it to living in ignominy forever, then no State in our Union would come out clean. If were to accept the logic of Pakistanis skipping Ahmedabad, then we should also insist that Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Guwahati should never ever host a sporting event.
The terrible blood-letting in Kolkata on August 16, 1946, the Muslim League's "Direct Action Day", should strike this city and West Bengal off the list of cricketing venues.
The series of communal riots in Mumbai (the violence of 1993 pales into insignificance compared to riots in the 1970s and 1980s) should lead to the blacklisting of India's financial capital.
The Nellie massacre of 1983, when the Congress was in power in both New Delhi and Guwahati, in which 3,300 Muslim men, women and children, many of them suckling infants, were killed, should have a similar impact.
And Delhi should not host any international event because of the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 when Congress hoodlums went around slaughtering more than 4,000 Sikhs to lessen their grief over Indira Gandhi's assassination.
For that matter, India, born in communal violence of unimaginable scale, should carry the shame forever. Never mind if we have traversed a long distance and put that sorrowful partition of the sub-continent behind us. Where do we draw a line? At what point does an event become a thing of the past so that society can move ahead?
The lib-left intelligentsia, of course, will pounce upon any suggestion of putting the Gujarat riots of 2002 behind us as desecrating the memory of those who were killed. Which, in turn, raises the question: What about the memory of the Hindus roasted alive when a rail coach in which they were travelling was set ablaze?
No, we should never forget. We should remember the merciless manner in which Jihadis hounded more than 400,000 Hindus, most of them Pandits, out of Kashmir valley.
We should remember the callous disregard with which Mrs Indira Gandhi forced elections in Assam, triggering the massacre in Nellie. We should recall the butchery in Delhi when the police chose to be deaf and blind to the pitiful shrieks and sights of Sikhs with burning tyres around their necks.
We should also not forget the Meerut and Malliana massacres in Uttar Pradesh when a Congress Chief Minister fiddled while Muslims were killed. Or the ghastly Kalupur riots in the early 1980s when the Congress was in power in Gujarat. Or the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 when Bihar was ruled by the Congress; more than a thousand Muslims were killed, many of them were dumped in wells.
We should remember because there are important lessons to be learned from these bitter memories, the most important of which is that slaughter in the name of religion or for a political cause is senseless killing that besmirches the collective conscience of the nation and holds up the Indian state to ridicule, at home and abroad.
That lesson, however, has never been learned because our "secular" politicians and the lib-left intelligentsia would rather cynically reap political benefits from the grief and sorrow and loss of riot victims than force a social consensus,"Never again".
So we have a situation where the Pakistanis, egged on by a member of the UPA Government, have turned up their nose at Ahmedabad for "political reasons" and our "secular" politicians and their lib-left patrons have responded with glee.
Perhaps the next step will be for the UPA Government to discourage investors from investing in Gujarat. Or discourage tourists from visiting that State.
If we were to take such cynicism to its logical conclusion, not only Gujarat but all of India should then be made a no-go zone. Is that what the secularists, the leftists and liberals want to achieve?.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Why only Ahmedabad? Lets ban Kolkata too
Kanchan Gupta
There is something perverse about the manner in which attention continues to be focused on the 2002 riots in Gujarat, as if never before had communal violence taken a terrible toll of human life and property in India.If the rioting that followed the burning of Hindus by Muslim mobs at Godhra deserves unequivocal condemnation, do does the despicable manner in which that violence continues to be used for achieving political ends.
First, the Congress and the Left used the riots for pillorying chief minister Narendra Modi. Then the jholawalla brigade led by Teesta Setalvad made it into a judicial carnival (it now transpires that claimed affidavits from riot victims submitted in court were no more than printed pamphlets, but that is another story). During last year's general election, graphic visuals of the riots were used for mobilising Muslim votes; a cynical abuse of victims' misery that is being repeated in Bihar by Lalu Prasad Yadav.
We are now told that a member of prime minister Manmohan Singh's council of ministers has taken the liberty of discouraging the Pakistan Cricket Board from including Ahmedabad in the itinerary of the Pakistani team's forthcoming tour because playing in riot-tainted Gujarat is just not cricket. The Pakistanis, of course, have been more than happy to oblige the UPA worthy.
If communal violence must permanently tar a State's reputation and condemn it to living in ignominy forever, then no State in our Union would come out clean. If were to accept the logic of Pakistanis skipping Ahmedabad, then we should also insist that Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Guwahati should never ever host a sporting event.
The terrible blood-letting in Kolkata on August 16, 1946, the Muslim League's "Direct Action Day", should strike this city and West Bengal off the list of cricketing venues.
The series of communal riots in Mumbai (the violence of 1993 pales into insignificance compared to riots in the 1970s and 1980s) should lead to the blacklisting of India's financial capital.
The Nellie massacre of 1983, when the Congress was in power in both New Delhi and Guwahati, in which 3,300 Muslim men, women and children, many of them suckling infants, were killed, should have a similar impact.
And Delhi should not host any international event because of the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 when Congress hoodlums went around slaughtering more than 4,000 Sikhs to lessen their grief over Indira Gandhi's assassination.
For that matter, India, born in communal violence of unimaginable scale, should carry the shame forever. Never mind if we have traversed a long distance and put that sorrowful partition of the sub-continent behind us. Where do we draw a line? At what point does an event become a thing of the past so that society can move ahead?
The lib-left intelligentsia, of course, will pounce upon any suggestion of putting the Gujarat riots of 2002 behind us as desecrating the memory of those who were killed. Which, in turn, raises the question: What about the memory of the Hindus roasted alive when a rail coach in which they were travelling was set ablaze?
No, we should never forget. We should remember the merciless manner in which Jihadis hounded more than 400,000 Hindus, most of them Pandits, out of Kashmir valley.
We should remember the callous disregard with which Mrs Indira Gandhi forced elections in Assam, triggering the massacre in Nellie. We should recall the butchery in Delhi when the police chose to be deaf and blind to the pitiful shrieks and sights of Sikhs with burning tyres around their necks.
We should also not forget the Meerut and Malliana massacres in Uttar Pradesh when a Congress Chief Minister fiddled while Muslims were killed. Or the ghastly Kalupur riots in the early 1980s when the Congress was in power in Gujarat. Or the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 when Bihar was ruled by the Congress; more than a thousand Muslims were killed, many of them were dumped in wells.
We should remember because there are important lessons to be learned from these bitter memories, the most important of which is that slaughter in the name of religion or for a political cause is senseless killing that besmirches the collective conscience of the nation and holds up the Indian state to ridicule, at home and abroad.
That lesson, however, has never been learned because our "secular" politicians and the lib-left intelligentsia would rather cynically reap political benefits from the grief and sorrow and loss of riot victims than force a social consensus,"Never again".
So we have a situation where the Pakistanis, egged on by a member of the UPA Government, have turned up their nose at Ahmedabad for "political reasons" and our "secular" politicians and their lib-left patrons have responded with glee.
Perhaps the next step will be for the UPA Government to discourage investors from investing in Gujarat. Or discourage tourists from visiting that State.
If we were to take such cynicism to its logical conclusion, not only Gujarat but all of India should then be made a no-go zone. Is that what the secularists, the leftists and liberals want to achieve?.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->