This is something we can do.

WE THE READERS….

This article came like a breath of fresh, unpolluted air after all the voices of hatred we have been hearing everywhere.

If you like it please let DNA and Ranjona Banerji know here. Why should you bother? Well, we all know they just want to sell their Newspaper? So here’s our chance to let them & their advertisers know that we the readers prefer to read about tolerance, peace and sanity. Let’s make a difference when we can.

History is not an excuse for carnage

Ranjona Banerji

Monday, October 13, 2008 22:23 IST

Hinduism is whatever Praveen Togadia or some random illiterate says

It is true that Mahmood of Ghazni arrived in India and went through the land with sword and fire. He also raided the Somnath Temple many times. There. I said it. The only problem is that Ghazni died in 1030 AD. This does not affect me personally, so it is not that kind of a problem. The problem is that I find myself unable to understand the logic that connects his excesses to explain why it is somehow okay for Muslims to be burnt to death in Andhra Pradesh in 2008.

And so, now, I feel the wrath of the “majority community” or the Hindutva brigade, in other words. “Do you have the guts to write about Muslims being terrorists?” All right, here you are: There are Muslims who are terrorists and terrorists who are Muslim.
Could you please now tell me the logic that connects some Muslims being terrorists to a family of six Muslims being burnt to death in Bhainsa, Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh? The fight in Bhainsa was something to do with Dassera versus Eid celebrations. Now I get it.

When Hindus and Muslims collide, the Muslims get burnt to death because Mahmood of Ghazni ransacked Somnath several times between 1024 to 1026, because Muslims in pre-Independent India partitioned the country and because Kashmiri pandits were driven out of Kashmir by militancy — also by Muslims. And I’m supposed to believe that all this justifies, in no uncertain terms, that 2000 Muslims were brutally killed in Gujarat in 2002? Oh, now I know what I’m going to hear: who threw the first stone? If Godhra had not happened and the rest of the Hindutva rant. Well, how about this? What happened in Godhra is not clear, the recent report of the Nanavati commission notwithstanding. Worse, how do the deaths of 59 people — horrible though they were — justify large-scale rioting and the deaths of 2000 people who had nothing to do with the Godhra attack? And even stranger, why did the Hindutva parties, so ready to stand up and fight when their cock-eyed version of Hinduism is attacked, do nothing to help the victims of the Godhra attack? Why did the father of some of the victims of S6 of the Sabarmati Express come out and attack the Narendra Modi government for its
indifference?

No, we’re not allowed to talk about all that. We’re not allowed to talk about the recent brutal and disgusting attacks on Christians and Muslims by Hindutva mobs, because by doing so, we are being anti-Hindu. This insult is so bad, that we must, to avoid it, ignore all the atrocities done by the Sangh Parivar. That way, we become good Hindus, even if we have never read the Bhagvad Gita or believe in karma or the transmigration of souls. All that stuff is not Hinduism. Hinduism is whatever Praveen Togadia or some random illiterate says at any point in time. Hindus, incidentally, according to this Hindutva theory, only believe in Hindutva and only feel disgusted when Hindus die. However, they do not feel so bad when lower caste Hindus die and that is why there were no Hindutva-led riots when members of the Bhotmange family of Khailanji were massacred. They were Dalits. Hindutva does not know what to do with Dalits.

The question which Hindutva does not answer is what about those of us — regardless of our faiths or the faiths we were born into or the faiths we may have acquired ourselves — who object to what is going on because we are Indians, who owe allegiance to the Republic of India first? Or those of us who think killing is wrong, regardless of whether it is by Hindus or Muslims or Christians or anybody? Indians who do not narrowly limit our definition of ourselves to instructions from a political party? Indians who are willing to discuss our faults and limitations and not mistake that discussion for one more assault by Mahmood of Ghazni (dead since 1030)?

George Santayana said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. What could you say to those who distort their history or never understood it in the first place?

Email: b_ranjona@dnaindia.net