Why Pratap Bhanu Mehta is wrong about Leicester and New Jersey
Oopalee Operajita writes: The liberal playbook appears to have one trick: Blame the Hindus, and, above all, blame Narendra Modi
PB Mehta is wrong about the current, global Hindu-Muslim polarisation being an artefact of the Modi government’s being in power. (Twitter/Screenshot)
Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair. This line, from the very first scene in Macbeth, with the three witches on the heath, revisited me as I read Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s article (‘Exporting division’, IE, September 23).
Mehta’s attempt to frame the Leicester attacks as an Indian Muslim versus Indian Hindu battle is insulting to Indian Muslims. The transnational Islamist jihadi mobs in Leicester appealed to their counterparts across the world to participate in the violent intimidation of the Hindu populace, “to clean out Leicester’s Hindus” and the Leicester Police confirmed that many key instigators that day were imported from other British cities.ADVERTISEMENT
Mehta erroneously takes the Ministry of External Affairs to task for its well-worded and timely press release, wherein it asks, first, for the protection of Indians in the UK, and then, specifically, for the Hindus under attack in Leicester. It would do that for diaspora Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis as well. Mehta asks of the MEA that it instruct Hindus not to chant “Jai Shri Ram” in “Muslim areas”. No spaces in Leicester are designated as “Muslim areas” by the government. No community can simply arrogate spaces in any city to itself.Also from Express Opinion |Muslim intellectuals meeting Mohan Bhagwat is an act of appeasement that helps RSS agenda
Mehta is wrong about the current, global Hindu-Muslim polarisation being an artefact of the Modi government’s being in power. The fight between the Left and the Right in the United States, or the polarisation emanating from the Black Lives Matter movement, or the violence in Iran over enforcing the hijab and the concomitant oppression of women are pretty evident.
It is nocuous as well as amusing that a Democratic body, from the tiny town of Teaneck, New Jersey, which Mehta cites, now carries out a witch-hunt against innocent and law-abiding Hindus. These organisations are tutored and brainwashed, in an obsessive, Goebbelsian fashion, by Islamic bodies in the US, and the mainstream media, to vilify and stymie Hindus. Why? The reason is not far to seek: The Indian diaspora in the US, of which the majority is Hindu, is very well-educated, hardworking, ethical, belongs to the very top financial echelons, and is a significant driver of the North American economy. Ditto in Leicester, England, which has a prosperous, gentle Hindu community.
That unfettered success of the Indian diaspora is too much for a failed, rogue state to countenance: Therefore, it has become the key driver in the global jihadist movement to destroy India, the Modi government, and the Hindus. Of this, there is ample evidence. From its lobbyists in Washington DC to the Indian American Muslim Council and CAIR, in tandem with the oppressively self-immolating, woke crowd of Indian origin, and activists, the focus is clear: Destroy India, destroy Hindus, and malign the Modi government with all your might.
Mehta equivocates on Hindu victimhood in Leicester, which has been proven, by impartial observers, as well as British MP, Bob Blackman, while, in a rather bizarre, yet predictable, fashion, he presents Muslim victimhood as an incontrovertible fact. The “curated persona of (Muslims) as eternally victimised souls” is something the Lutyens media in India, activists, and its partners in the international media, and certain echelons of global government, have assiduously propagated.ADVERTISEMENT
Therefore: Blame the Hindus, and, above all, blame Narendra Modi.
In the manic Leftist playbook, the victim inevitably morphs into the oppressor. For, all roads lead to Hinduism. The rest: they are all Honourable men. Only Hindus do wrong; only Hindus are evil, and only Hindus are violent. Terrorists of a certain faith — the puzzling, in-your-face bellicose and sanguine “religion of peace” — can never do any wrong.
A saison of Opposites is upon us. The Opposites Cabal coolly flips the truth around. So, when a mob of 200 international Islamic fundamentalists threatens to desecrate a Durga Temple in Leicester, flip the story around: Blame it all, all, on the Hindus, and Hinduism. Then, with stifling ubiquity, and legerdemain, blame it on Prime Minister Modi and his government. This is getting tiresome. The anti-Modi claque needs new tricks in its bag.
The writer is Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Views are personalFirst published on: 26-09-2022 at 05:31:21 pm
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