The manner in which the liberals have rushed to pan the charge sheet, without sparing thought for the conspiracy hatched by the ring leaders of the anti-CAA protests, betrays their inherent inability to see things in perspective.
New Delhi: The police charge sheet in the case of the Delhi riots earlier in the year has drawn the ire of the leftist-liberal crowd. This is not surprising. In particular, their anger is directed against the alleged bid to malign civil society members who had mentored some of the key figures in the anti-CAA protests and, later, organised the riots to coincide with Donald Trump’s visit. Of course, they are horrified that the police has treated the provocative role of the pro-CAA elements with kid gloves.
Yet, the manner in which the liberals have rushed to pan the charge sheet, without sparing a moment’s thought for the well laid-out conspiracy hatched by the ring leaders of the anti-CAA protests, betrays their inherent inability to see things in perspective. It is this ingrained habit of the viscerally anti- Right crowd which has rendered it virtually irrelevant in shaping the popular narrative. It is particularly regrettable when one realises that some of the liberal commentators are exceedingly decent men who have nothing but the good of society at heart.
Apparently, even otherwise, good men find it hard to break free from the long-standing collective mould, which postulates that a daily condemnation of the RSS-BJP alone can earn them respect of their peers. To be a fellow traveller, one is required to adhere to the fundamentals which prescribe a robotic finger-pointing at the ruling regime. Magnifying the aberrant act of some nameless individuals in some remote corner of the country and then foist the blame on the ruling regime is the stock-in-trade of the professional leftist-liberals. Yet, the failure to be even-handed, to not see things always from the prism of anti-RSS, anti-BJP, has directly and indirectly given succour to the most vicious criminal elements who control the collective Muslim psyche.
Let us stay on the Delhi riots for a moment. In all the commentary on the Delhi Police charge sheet in the riots case one has failed to find an oblique mention of the well-planned conspiracy to create violence to embarrass the country when the US President was here on a two-day visit in late February. Even the purblind could have seen how overnight the anti-CAA protesters opened another front at Jaffrabad, declaring their intent to block a busy thoroughfare. All along they had occupied Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Millia quarters, but without offering any cogent reason they decided to block the busy road in Jaffrabad. Why? We all know the reason why, don’t we?
This is not all. Video images—not trashed as contrived even by the liberal-secularist crowd—of an AAP municipal councillor amassing in bulk well in advance of the D-Day the full arsenal of riots on the roof of his illegally built four-storey house were widely available on social media. The lethal tools of violence could not have been amassed overnight by Tahir Hussain and his accomplices. Nor could anyone with an open mind have ignored the use of illegal firearms brandished on camera by some of the anti-CAA rioters. The provocative harangues of Umar Khalid and others of his ilk too were widely available for anyone to fathom the actual mindset at work behind the protests.
Indeed, if they wanted to see with eyes open they could also have seen how the anti-CAA protests were sustained all through. A myth was created about the long suppressed and long-suffering Muslim women overnight possessed of a new and fully “woke” consciousness and emerging on the street to defend secularism and the Indian Constitution. The fact that aside from a handful of activists, most of whom regularly sat on dharna were paid and provided food, water and other refreshments is lost on the defenders of the republican values. It was a well-oiled operation masterminded by jihadi elements with masjids, mullahs and banned Islamic outfits sustaining it organisationally and materially.
Contrary to the false propaganda, the anti-CAA elements revealed their narrow-mindedness and lack of generosity of spirit towards the persecuted minorities in the Islamic nations in our neighbourhood which have failed to protect the life and limb of the handful of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, etc., who still remain there. In the name of high-fluting concerns for Constitutional values, they closed their eyes to the lived reality of the suffering minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, etc. Given that the alleged totems of secularism had resorted to rank communalism to divide the sub-continent in 1947, trying to protect the victims of the perfidious Partition was a laudable act and was certainly pro-humanity.
When the framers of the Constitution made a questionable distinction between Hindus and Muslims to bestow on the latter the special privilege to be governed by their own personal laws in marriage, divorce and inheritance, etc., to say this was the first time religion as a marker of state policy was introduced and was, therefore, repugnant to their secular conscience was nothing but sheer hypocrisy. This hypocrisy being of a piece with their radio silence when Kashmiri pundits are mercilessly kept out of their homes from where they were driven at the point of the jihadi sword decades ago or when Hindus are killed daily by the jihadis.
As for the riots, while all the tell-tale evidence which speaks of a pre-planned conspiracy to create the riots and indulge in violence is ignored completely by the liberal-left crowd, they harp incessantly on the ill-chosen words of a Kapil Mishra or an Anurag Thakur. “Desh key gaddaro ko, goli maro saley ko” was indeed an attempt to polarise the Delhi voters on the eve of the local Assembly poll, but it was more than an orator on the stump haranguing his audience against the corrupt politicians—jala do, phoonk do, aag laga do aisey samaj ko jis mein chor or loottarey panpatey ho (burn down the world in which thugs and thieves of public purse prosper).
The problem with the liberal crowd is it robotically picks on an aberrant act by a nameless Hindu in some remote part of the country and rushes to condemn the ruling regime for turning India into lynchistan. Like how it latched on to the Kapil Mishra-Anurag Thakur misspeak ahead of the Assembly poll. Stray acts of egregious behaviour by members of the majority community must be magnified a million-fold, while organised crime mafias and riots and never-ending jihad against the state must be shoved under the carpet in the name of secularism-liberalism. For, otherwise, the liberal-leftist intellectuals fear being defrocked by the high priests of secularism. Therefore, we are not surprised that even before a moment’s judicial scrutiny, the professional liberal-leftist phalanx has rushed to rubbish the charge sheet as a tissue of lies. Their one-sidedness evokes pity rather than anger.