I wonder where the liberals, intellectuals and the media are when it comes to talking about rights of Muslims.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: I don’t know for how long the ghosts of Partition will haunt the poor and the left-out sections of Indian society. Whether it’s the human tragedy of Bhagalpur in the 1980s, Bombay in the 1990s, Gujarat in 2002 or Muzaffarnagar in 2013, one finds the same energy, filled with hatred to systematically attack and physically and economically destroy Muslims. I wonder where the liberals, intellectuals and the media are when it comes to talking about rights of Muslims. Can’t they see what’s happening in the so-called relief camps set up around Muzaffarnagar after the worst riots UP had witnessed after decades? Thousands of families are staying in tents fighting the biting cold of winter.
The crude behaviour of political leaders and the ignorance of the media towards these unfortunate souls have played a major role in ensuring that no effective effort has been made to settle the homeless in their villages. Every other day, some politician or bureaucrat comes up with a new theory, just to score points. The latest in this race is UP’s principal home secretary, who denied that 34 children died in camps due to the bitter cold. He retorted to the criticism of his government by saying that had the cold been responsible for the deaths, then no one could have survived in Siberia. Earlier, the Congress supremo, Rahul Gandhi, had claimed that relatives of some of the Muslims killed in the riots had contacts with Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. One wonders where this insensitivity and hatred will take India.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, January 2nd, 2014.
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