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Tavleen Singh's article: Osama needs
some more lessons in Islam, published in The Indian Express, is like
the dropping of the second shoe, without which India would not have
slept that night.
The resounding silence that could be
heard all across the Indian nation, while the world tuned in to
Obama's speech at Cairo boldly and generously embracing Muslim
world, was more painful in the backdrop of the most successful
marginalization of Muslims in India.
Tavleen Singh,. a writer famous for
her thin skin as far as Islam and Muslims are concerned, was typical
of the ultra jingoists, who could hardly breath, while world's lone
super power, had engaged the Muslim world so publicly and so
passionately and offering them a new strategic alliance for the
peace of the world.
The name of the emotion that gripped a
section of the Hindutva elements was nothing but sheer jealousy.
How can they tolerate that the Muslims
who had 'brutalized' the Hindu over centuries and now finally been
successfully divided in three parts in the sub-continent so as to
render them insignificant in the comity of nations, should be given
so much attention, so much lauding, so much importance that bordered
on virtual call for peace negotiation after a virtual defeat that
stared the US in the face. And all because of a handful of al Qaida
‘terrorists’, who seems to have pinned down their mighty army in
these God-forsaken lands!
What a sudden change of fortune. It
was only yesterday, when India was in love with President Bush and
America's Jewish lobby has been working overtime to favour India, in
its quest to find a new strategic partnership with their country and
a new set of close relationship with Israel, ensuring billions of
dollars worth of defense rearmament. In this equation, India's own
150 million Muslim were so totally marginalized, as if they deserved
to be punished for their crimes of the past.
So it was a nightmare for the likes of
Tavleen Singh to finish watching the worldwide telecast of Obama
speech without him mentioning neither India nor the Hindus, even
once in his hour long love fest with Islam. For TOI Washington
correspondence, it was a relief that Obama left out Kashmir in his
speech.
Tavleen had to react by puking her
bile and offering her unsolicited lessons in Islam to the untutored
Obama. Indian Express site mentions that her diatribe was the most
emailed article of the day. Doubtless she has legions of supporters,
who felt just like her, dejected and ignored, if not betrayed.
However, this is the worst case of
insecurity and inferiority complex being so blatantly displayed in
India's English media. India need not have cringed. It is great
nation and it has great destiny ahead, if only it comes out of its
exclusivity shell.
In the event, the world will not
ignore India's adverse reaction to Obama speech. India and Israel
were the only two nations in the world that had come out against
Obama's opening towards Islam. Israel’s reasons are obvious; India’s
reasons are still obscure to the world.
Indian Muslims are a far cry from the
Osama brigade and even though they have been institutionally
discriminated against and reduced to the worst of the lot, they have
remained peaceful all throughout the last 60 years of Indian's
freedom from the British.
In the recent elections, they had
reverted to tactical support to Indian National Congress, which came
out with a manifestly large clutch of parliamentary seats that
virtually enabled it to dictate its terms to coalition partners.
Though all around the nation media and intelligentsia are openly
mentioning how Muslim support to Congress has turned the tide for
Congress, the arrogant Congress leaders have yet to find the courage
to cultivate the magnanimity to acknowledge Muslim debt and offer
them their rightful place in the political formations.
Now that Obama has shown a different
mode of reassessing the Muslim world and Islam, Indian leadership is
demonstrably peeved. Only reckless commentators are wallowing in
their own grief and writing poison articles. That can not delay the
morn that is bound to break out from within this dark night of
bigotry and prejudice.
Indian Express did try to balance the
reactions to Obama’s Cairo speech on Islam, by publishing the next
article by Sudheendra Kulkarni, on the same page. It is remarkable,
how a liberal turned Hindutvadi had gathered up the courage to call
for a positive engagement with the Muslims, even to his own
extremist Hindutva party which finds itself at a dead end while
stuck in the rut of hate and prejudice.
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