03-06-2006, 05:00 AM
Here is Vir Singhvi HT's opion
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>When peace with Pakistan came up, every single person I met was clear: there could only be peace on our terms. And this meant not giving up an inch of Kashmir. Nor was there any support for the idea of more autonomy for Kashmir.</b>
So, let us treat all this liberal rhetoric about how Indians long for peace with scepticism. <b>Our idea of peace is: Pakistan should shut up and behave itself or we will retaliate is not a public mood that will lead to any lasting settlement of this long-running conflict.</b> And I think that the challenge before politicians is to shift the consensus. Big Media has tried. And I think it has failed.
⢠<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>The general view in Delhi is that the BJP is floundering, that it is a party without an issue. Judging by my travels, this view could be seriously mistaken.
There is a massive Hindu backlash building up. The public mood reminded me of the late 1980s, when such issues as Shah Bano and The Satanic Verses so upset moderate Hindus that they turned against Congress-style secularism.</span>
<b>The provocation, this time around, is the attitude of the Muslim political leadership to foreign Islamic issues.</b> No Hindu I met thought it was right for a Danish paper to carry cartoons of the Prophet. <b>But why, they all asked, did Indians Muslims have to get so agitated? What did it have to do with us? Why should a minister in the UP government announce a bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist? Why should Indian Muslims demand the recall of the Danish ambassador?</b>
I have written about the shameful cop-out by liberal Muslims over these issues before so I will not labour the point. But the Hindu backlash is a perfect issue waiting for a BJP initiative. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>This time around, the BJP need not focus on how Indian secularism makes Hindus second-class citizens in their own country.</span>
(Nobody buys that line any longer.) <b>All it needs to do is to portray Indian Muslims as unreasonable fanatics obsessed with global Muslim issues and argue that they subscribe to some international pan-Islamic identity that could easily conflict with Indian nationalism</b>.
My feeling is that if liberal Muslims continue to react as pathetically as they have over the last few months and if liberal Hindus do not make it clear that genuine secularism means that we fight all kinds of fanaticism â both Hindu and Muslim â a new generation of BJP leaders will ride this backlash to return to power. By ignoring the Hindu sentiment, Big Media is making a big mistake.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>When peace with Pakistan came up, every single person I met was clear: there could only be peace on our terms. And this meant not giving up an inch of Kashmir. Nor was there any support for the idea of more autonomy for Kashmir.</b>
So, let us treat all this liberal rhetoric about how Indians long for peace with scepticism. <b>Our idea of peace is: Pakistan should shut up and behave itself or we will retaliate is not a public mood that will lead to any lasting settlement of this long-running conflict.</b> And I think that the challenge before politicians is to shift the consensus. Big Media has tried. And I think it has failed.
⢠<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>The general view in Delhi is that the BJP is floundering, that it is a party without an issue. Judging by my travels, this view could be seriously mistaken.
There is a massive Hindu backlash building up. The public mood reminded me of the late 1980s, when such issues as Shah Bano and The Satanic Verses so upset moderate Hindus that they turned against Congress-style secularism.</span>
<b>The provocation, this time around, is the attitude of the Muslim political leadership to foreign Islamic issues.</b> No Hindu I met thought it was right for a Danish paper to carry cartoons of the Prophet. <b>But why, they all asked, did Indians Muslims have to get so agitated? What did it have to do with us? Why should a minister in the UP government announce a bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist? Why should Indian Muslims demand the recall of the Danish ambassador?</b>
I have written about the shameful cop-out by liberal Muslims over these issues before so I will not labour the point. But the Hindu backlash is a perfect issue waiting for a BJP initiative. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>This time around, the BJP need not focus on how Indian secularism makes Hindus second-class citizens in their own country.</span>
(Nobody buys that line any longer.) <b>All it needs to do is to portray Indian Muslims as unreasonable fanatics obsessed with global Muslim issues and argue that they subscribe to some international pan-Islamic identity that could easily conflict with Indian nationalism</b>.
My feeling is that if liberal Muslims continue to react as pathetically as they have over the last few months and if liberal Hindus do not make it clear that genuine secularism means that we fight all kinds of fanaticism â both Hindu and Muslim â a new generation of BJP leaders will ride this backlash to return to power. By ignoring the Hindu sentiment, Big Media is making a big mistake.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->