Monitoring Anti-hindu/india Activities Abroad

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[url="http://www.dailypioneer.com/291667/Serenading-the-secessionists.html"]Serenading the secessionists[/url]

Those who spewed venom and espoused secession at a seminar on azadi in Delhi last week are criminals who must pay for their treasonable act

It can no longer be ignored as self-seeking antics of a publicity hound. Social celebrity and political busybody Arundhati Roy has truly crossed the line this time. Encouraged by the prominent publication of a despicable article that claimed India too needed azadi from Kashmir some months ago, she went overboard at a secessionist gathering in Delhi last Thursday, saying Kashmir ought to get azadi from “bhookhey-nangey (starving and naked)” India. She went on to repeat her earlier disparaging remarks on the country of her birth, calling India a “hollow superpower” from which “I dissociate”.



If so, Ms Roy, the only honourable course left for you is to renounce Indian citizenship and migrate to whichever country will take you. I doubt if too many would enthusiastically lap up someone who is an avowed traitor. If she can do this to India, they would think, it must speak volumes for her moral fabric (if she has any in the first place). And nobody loves traitors and spies; they remain suspect, often despised, even if given shelter in another country for reasons of political expediency.

I have a serious issue in this regard with my friend and predecessor as Pioneer Editor, Vinod Mehta, who has been Roy’s principal sponsor through the columns of Outlook magazine. I know Vinod loves iconoclasts and, contrary to his amiable persona, has an anarchist streak, but he has done great disservice to the country by allowing her to spew venom against India by repeatedly publishing her voluminous, rambling essays oozing hate. This is not the first time I am saying this; nor is this behind Vinod’s back as I have conveyed my feelings upfront on occasion. Criminals do not deserve a respectable platform; denying traitors the ‘oxygen of publicity’ is the only way to snuff out their diabolical machinations.



Arundhati Roy was not the only hardline India-basher and secessionist at Thursday’s Delhi seminar. A man who is proud to say he wants Kashmir to merge with Pakistan was the main draw at the gathering, presided over by SAR Geelani, acquitted by the Supreme Court in the Parliament House attack case after being initially sentenced to death. Incidentally, the acquittal order specifically noted the Court’s regret at not finding clinching evidence against him. They also collected an assortment of other secessionists, including a few ageing but vitriolic wannabes from Punjab, Nagaland and Manipur.

I doubt if our namby-pamby Government will have the guts even to lodge FIRs against the criminals who blasphemed India sitting in the heart of the national capital. I am even more distressed that Friday’s newspapers largely ignored Roy’s and Geelani’s outrageous sermonising and reported only that a shoe was thrown at Geelani and that Kashmiri Pandits tried unsuccessfully to disrupt the seminar. A strident critic of vandalism by goonda groups in newspaper/television channel offices, for once I regret the demonstrators failed in their mission on Thursday.