For God’s sake, let it be  
A prayer from Middle India
http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020318/ed3.html

There cannot be a dry eye in our land, nor many people sleeping well. The children’s voices call us from inside the burning train, and the ex-MLA’s home, hoarse with begging for protection on the phone for six hours. What did the Godhra mob hope to achieve? Or the kar sevaks? Another Partition? Why is Narendra Modi still in his chair when he has failed to protect the rest of his state?

The English press blames the VHP. But, logically, don’t we need to look back even further? Who had the media and academia in a death-grip for four decades since Independence? The Left. Going by its line of reasoning, if the train victims can thank the VHP for their ghastly fate, then the rest of us can thank the Left for creating the VHP, for midwifing this monster with their godless, sterile, fascist ideas.

The Left wanted to take away people’s religious faith, but what did they offer in return, except an arid wasteland of borrowed ideas that they themselves were the first to exploit on the international seminar circuit? All that bleeding concern about poverty and inequity, that perennial government-bashing, in order to obtain grants and stipends from the West, but contributing precious little to the actual betterment of the country.

If thinking was their ‘pesha’, did they employ either imagination or creativity in suggesting alternative ways to be? No, the bandar-log rarely did. It took Manmohanomics to give a hardworking middle class some sense of reward for effort. It was India’s misfortune that worldwide recession hit this new chance to create wealth and, consequently, jobs.

Meanwhile what did the Left offer India? A failed state in West Bengal. Education without employment in Kerala, leading to the highest national suicide rate. Not that the others were perfect. Successive governments lost generations when they did not focus on primary education. But the only thing the Left offered was shrill ideology.

And lectures! They knew how to lecture everybody else, and mock the legitimate desire of a people for kama and artha. In fact we were not supposed to hanker after moksha either, but only follow a pattern of dharma decided by the Left over a lal salaam and rum in a thick Yera glass.

We don’t mean the sincere ones in the field who took on the feudals, or people’s poets like Ghadar. No, it is the opining armchair Lefties in the press and in big universities who hurt people’s sentiments and irritated moderate Hindus into casting their lot with the kaccha brigade. How have their many unreadable books on tribals, on agrarian systems, on social relationships, been of any practical use in either policy or legislation?

At the end of the day it comes down to committed NGOs and the initiative and sincerity of individual citizens, either in the bureaucracy or in private life, does it not? People who possibly never read an OUP book in their lives? Middle India needs to draw a deep breath at this horrible moment and reconsider. Have we Hindus held onto our ancient faith despite the last 800 years merely for this? The Left’s totalitarian approach has only made the wounds of history bleed further.

Can’t we in Middle India now speak up and undertake a personal mission to defuse the anger of neighbours, friends and family? A one-point programme to patiently convince one Hindu each to let go of hurt and anger at what happened hundreds of years ago.

We can’t presume to tell mourners what to feel. Nor do macho nations like the USA forgive. But Gladys Staines and Marianne Pearl forgave. Can’t we be like them, not like the jehadis? And for God’s sake, can’t educated Muslims persuade the ghettos to join the mainstream instead of sustaining medieval Arabistans in a Bharat that will never lose its Hindu majority, despite mullah fantasies?

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