<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, The Statesman
Why hasn't Lakshmanpur incident stirred us?
Sir, ~ The report "Jail custody for top cops" (1 October) for abetment of suicide of Rizwanur Rahman brings to mind the remarkable quote of Lord Denning: "Be you ever so high, the law is above you."
The 14th metropolitan magistrate, Bankshall Court, has underpinned this very concept once again in no uncertain terms in her judgment and upheld the ideal of equity and justice true to the spirit of the Constitution.
The verdict also marks the victory of vox populi expressed in many roadblocks, silent processions with candlelights, in prayers at places of worship and in spontaneous condemnation by intellectuals. The outcry was so intense that even the chief minister had to bow to the popular pressure and visit the house of the victim and come out with the promise that "justice will be done".
The media too played a very vital and admirable role in keeping the issue alive and providing feedback with all developments in the case. It is a wonderful case study of the public standing up to interference by government officials in the private life of a common citizen.
While the media and the public were thus in the thick of the fight against injustice done to Rizwanur Rahman, another unsuspecting young man away from the glare of media hype fell a victim to the crude "justice" meted out by a "kangaroo court" in Lakshmanpur village in Murshidabad district in July this year.
The offense of the youth was that he, like Rizwanur, belonging to a different religion, had married a Muslim girl for love while both of them were in Mumbai. The Muslim girl knew the religious background of her groom, but the fact was concealed from her relations for fear of disapproval or worse. But the truth popped up at an inconvenient and unguarded moment during their sojourn in Lakshmanpur. The man was arraigned before a shalishi sabha which found him guilty of marrying a Muslim girl concealing his religion and passed the verdict of beheading which was allegedly carried out by some local youths. Their marriage, it may be noted, was duly registered and the couple had a 10-month-old baby.
Alas! Excepting a few reports in the press immediately after the revelation of the crime, things remained under the wraps. No angry procession came out on the road condemning the episode. No candlelight procession was for him, no chief minister went to console the family, no political party made the case a focal point of publicity and people did not throng the prayer halls for the peace of the departed soul.
The FIR filed by the widow in the local police station probably is now yellowing in the file outside the ken of the IB or the CBI.
A doubt gnaws at the heart ~ whether all the displays of sympathy in the media and on the streets of Kolkata for Rizwanur we have seen for months together, were at all genuine or politicised stunts or just ersatz show-biz. If the people would be so compassionate and concerned about Rizwanur, why are they silent in the matter of the Lakshmanpur incident?
In this case, the media raised no ripple anywhere, no picture of the hapless man was splashed on the pages of newspapers, no political leader has come out with any statement, not to speak of condolence message sent to the bereaved family. One wonders if our sympathy is ethnicity or religion-specific. If in Rizwanur's case police were instrumental for the death, in the Lakshmanpur incident a group of village elders arrogated to themselves the authority to hold the man guilty flouting all the tenets of law and went, not to abet any suicide, but allegedly to get him decapitated in the most inhuman manner.
The media, human rights groups and the people of West Bengal found always to be vociferous against even dimly perceived injustices, cannot disown their obligation in this case. The guilty must be brought to book or else the rule of law will lose its meaning and relevance.
~ Yours, etc., Prasanta Kumar Bhattacharjee, Salt Lake, 4 October. http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?...ess=1&id=228053<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I keep telling everyone including and especially my superiors in my party and the RSS, so far without any success, that the media in India are the worst and the most dangerous promoters of pseudo-secularism, and concealers of Islamic misdeeds. And this is not by accident. Petrodollars from Saudi and Kuwait and Narcodollars from Pakistan flow in to motivate scribes and media owners alike. In support of this I quote what Mitrokhin had said in his archives : in the early 1970s the KGB had planted some 15,000 articles all over Indian media (at that time it was only print media) to prop up Indira Gandhi's electoral prospects. What the KGB had done the Islamic Development Bank of Jeddah can do just as well, possibly better. The Commies in West Bengal have no less than three news Bengali channels and three newspapers supporting them to different extents. They are not fools! they would not be spending all this money without getting returns! We need to combat these, we need to combat vicious women like Teesta Setalvad, Mamata Banerjee and Arundhati Roy. I keep shouting this all over the place, and nobody pays any attention. Very soon I will be dubbed an eccentric. We need to have a media management policy, and our own media. Will someone wake up before we turn into Dar-ul-Islam?
Tathagata Roy
Ex-President, BJP, West Bengal
Member, BJP National Executive<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why hasn't Lakshmanpur incident stirred us?
Sir, ~ The report "Jail custody for top cops" (1 October) for abetment of suicide of Rizwanur Rahman brings to mind the remarkable quote of Lord Denning: "Be you ever so high, the law is above you."
The 14th metropolitan magistrate, Bankshall Court, has underpinned this very concept once again in no uncertain terms in her judgment and upheld the ideal of equity and justice true to the spirit of the Constitution.
The verdict also marks the victory of vox populi expressed in many roadblocks, silent processions with candlelights, in prayers at places of worship and in spontaneous condemnation by intellectuals. The outcry was so intense that even the chief minister had to bow to the popular pressure and visit the house of the victim and come out with the promise that "justice will be done".
The media too played a very vital and admirable role in keeping the issue alive and providing feedback with all developments in the case. It is a wonderful case study of the public standing up to interference by government officials in the private life of a common citizen.
While the media and the public were thus in the thick of the fight against injustice done to Rizwanur Rahman, another unsuspecting young man away from the glare of media hype fell a victim to the crude "justice" meted out by a "kangaroo court" in Lakshmanpur village in Murshidabad district in July this year.
The offense of the youth was that he, like Rizwanur, belonging to a different religion, had married a Muslim girl for love while both of them were in Mumbai. The Muslim girl knew the religious background of her groom, but the fact was concealed from her relations for fear of disapproval or worse. But the truth popped up at an inconvenient and unguarded moment during their sojourn in Lakshmanpur. The man was arraigned before a shalishi sabha which found him guilty of marrying a Muslim girl concealing his religion and passed the verdict of beheading which was allegedly carried out by some local youths. Their marriage, it may be noted, was duly registered and the couple had a 10-month-old baby.
Alas! Excepting a few reports in the press immediately after the revelation of the crime, things remained under the wraps. No angry procession came out on the road condemning the episode. No candlelight procession was for him, no chief minister went to console the family, no political party made the case a focal point of publicity and people did not throng the prayer halls for the peace of the departed soul.
The FIR filed by the widow in the local police station probably is now yellowing in the file outside the ken of the IB or the CBI.
A doubt gnaws at the heart ~ whether all the displays of sympathy in the media and on the streets of Kolkata for Rizwanur we have seen for months together, were at all genuine or politicised stunts or just ersatz show-biz. If the people would be so compassionate and concerned about Rizwanur, why are they silent in the matter of the Lakshmanpur incident?
In this case, the media raised no ripple anywhere, no picture of the hapless man was splashed on the pages of newspapers, no political leader has come out with any statement, not to speak of condolence message sent to the bereaved family. One wonders if our sympathy is ethnicity or religion-specific. If in Rizwanur's case police were instrumental for the death, in the Lakshmanpur incident a group of village elders arrogated to themselves the authority to hold the man guilty flouting all the tenets of law and went, not to abet any suicide, but allegedly to get him decapitated in the most inhuman manner.
The media, human rights groups and the people of West Bengal found always to be vociferous against even dimly perceived injustices, cannot disown their obligation in this case. The guilty must be brought to book or else the rule of law will lose its meaning and relevance.
~ Yours, etc., Prasanta Kumar Bhattacharjee, Salt Lake, 4 October. http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?...ess=1&id=228053<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I keep telling everyone including and especially my superiors in my party and the RSS, so far without any success, that the media in India are the worst and the most dangerous promoters of pseudo-secularism, and concealers of Islamic misdeeds. And this is not by accident. Petrodollars from Saudi and Kuwait and Narcodollars from Pakistan flow in to motivate scribes and media owners alike. In support of this I quote what Mitrokhin had said in his archives : in the early 1970s the KGB had planted some 15,000 articles all over Indian media (at that time it was only print media) to prop up Indira Gandhi's electoral prospects. What the KGB had done the Islamic Development Bank of Jeddah can do just as well, possibly better. The Commies in West Bengal have no less than three news Bengali channels and three newspapers supporting them to different extents. They are not fools! they would not be spending all this money without getting returns! We need to combat these, we need to combat vicious women like Teesta Setalvad, Mamata Banerjee and Arundhati Roy. I keep shouting this all over the place, and nobody pays any attention. Very soon I will be dubbed an eccentric. We need to have a media management policy, and our own media. Will someone wake up before we turn into Dar-ul-Islam?
Tathagata Roy
Ex-President, BJP, West Bengal
Member, BJP National Executive<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->