House Hunting Of Our Secularists
Since Narendra Modi took over as the PM of this nation in
2014 there are lots of instances where religious disharmony was manufactured
for one single reason – to show how the NDA government automatically brings
religious volatility in the nation. But the facts are far from being what the
secularists or their beloved media wants us to believe. Almost all of the
church attacks that media cried over for days were found out to be, either
manufactured or by insiders to show the present dispensation in bad light.
There were arrests made in almost all church vandalism which showed the real
culprits are the ones who were employees of the said churches or routine
burglary in want of quick and easy money. It is a different matter that such
vandalism occurring in our temples seldom gets the media time that the church
attacks got. Without fact checking the media cried “Attack On Secularism” while
the truth appears to be otherwise.
That ploy failed, much like the wolf crying that the same
secularists were doing for long 13 years post 2002 Gujarat riots. I say failed
because the Church attacks seem to have disappeared all of a sudden. At one
point, every second day we had our media bursting out in episodic outrage over
something as silly as throwing a stone at the gate of a particular church. Once
the truth behind all such cases came to light, our media at once stopped
shouting and so are the Church attacks. Do you feel something is missing in the
plot? Certainly, I do at least.
In desperation, the secularists need new lease of Oxygen to
keep on tarnishing this Modi government on religious lines. And people like
Misbah Qadri routinely provide that Oxygen cylinder by their insinuating and
cooked up stories. Irony even, the Arnav Goswamis of the world buy such synthetic
stories and hold hour long debates to malign the government without fact
checking even for once. Now that Misbah’s story is been proved fake by the
police and at least three independent dallies, will AG hold another hour long
debate and ask the same panelists, starting with that fraud woman called Misbah
Qadri, to apologize to the government? He won’t because that is not how our
secularists work. They believe in shoot and scoot theory as truthfulness and
honesty are never their virtue.
Not only our media, even our secularists believe in the
shoot and scoot theory like it is nobody’d business. One among the prominent
secular Rudalis is a certain Shehzad Poonawala. In fact both the Poonawala
brothers are of high secular breed. Their contribution in upholding the Indian
version of secularism is noteworthy. No wonder, both of them are darlings of
our equally secularist media, both digital and print. So when one skewed piece
of Shehzad gets published in a typical Congress doormat called Indian Express,
it hardly raises an eyebrow on the content and the legitimacy of the claim or
the lack of it. You can read Shehzad’s bile right here before you move ahead.
Shehzad starts with a typical victimhood tone as every
secularist worth of his/her salt does.
Recent cases of alleged discrimination in Mumbai — a diamond firm refused a job to MBA graduate Zeshan Ali Khan and Misbah Qadri was denied a flat, reportedly because of their religion — once again lift the veil of cosmopolitanism that sits uneasily on the ugly reality that corrodes the constitutional pillar of secularism. While in these specific cases, the National Commission for Minorities was approached and inquiries and penal action initiated, the larger question that needs to be addressed is: How should we tackle religion-based discrimination, and not just its symptoms?
I agree, Zeshan Ali’s
case is deplorable, at least on the fact that, there were official
communication going between the company and Ali. But that is just half of the
story. If Shehzad is worried about Zeshan then he should equally be worried
about hundreds of classifieds that categorically ask for Muslim candidates. Have
anyone seen Shehzad writing even a line against those classifieds? None that I
can remember. So when Shehzad wakes up crying discrimination for a Mislim, I
can safely call him, for want of a better word, a Hypocrite. If Zeshan pinches
Shehzad the bad way it should equally pinch Shehzad for a certain Sudhansu
Shekhar or a Vikramaditya Poddar. Both were denied jobs because they were non-Muslims.
Since I never heard Shehzad crying wolf back then, I can see the selected
amnesia with Shehzad and his ilk.
Misbah Qadri is a
bad example that Shehzad should have stayed away from. Since he has used her
name, it only pontificates why we shouldn’t believe a single word of the Mashbah Qadris in future. That woman is an outright liar. Isn’t Shehzad aware of the
fact that, her version of victimhood is actually a thought after story to get
that limelight factor? Isn’t he aware that the lady in question and her story
is out rightly refuted by the investigative authorities and other Muslims
staying in the same society? Even Mid-Day, The Hindu and local daily carried
stories to prove how Ms. Misbah Qadri is a big time liar in hunt for that media
time to propel her otherwise depleting career. Since Shehzad started with the
lie of Misbah Qadri it only shows how fractured are his thought processes and
how stories to malign Modi government are routinely brewed in our secularism
bylanes.
He further writes
The deep extent of the malaise has been demonstrated by several independent studies. For instance, one study shows that in the secondary and tertiary sector, the share of Muslims between 16 and 64 years of age in regular and casual employment is lower than that of SCs and STs. In the public sector, the situation is equally dismal, with Muslims having a share of just 2.5 per cent in the civil services.
Let’s keep these
studies aside since most of the studies were proved wrong by facts on the
grounds. Let’s ponder on the point that Shehzad wants to harp on. Who is
responsible for the pathetic presence of Muslims in our taskforce, starting with the primary sector to our public and government sectors? For decades, the
Congress party intentionally made sure that the Muslims remain uneducated and
stay in their ghettos because there where Congress’s political dividends are. An
educated Muslim would see through the appeasement farce and will ask very
uncomfortable questions for his terrible situation. That is what Congress doesn’t
want. Shehzad, the sympathizer in chief must have asked the right questions
here than simply quoting numbers. He should have asked why his beloved party
Congress kept the Muslims to languish in the gutter for this long. Who created
ghettos for the Muslims to stay there and get stereotyped further? But our
secularists have a serious problem with history, albeit the history isn’t the history
of Gujarat and the year is 2002. So I give that liberty to Shehzad as it suites
most of the secularists, not just him.
But he carries on
with his rambling. Let’s see where he jumps next.
Housing, like employment, is another area where Muslims face discrimination. A comprehensive account of this can be found in the Sachar Committee report, not to mention the media stories that emerge periodically from urban centers like Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Noida. Most often, the terminology used is not as direct as it was in the 99acres.com case, which involved a “no Muslim” ad and which this writer had legally pursued in 2013. Discrimination usually revolves around stereotyping — “Muslims have four wives” and “Muslims eat non-vegetarian food”. Political and media narratives that portray Muslims as terrorists or “love jihadis” deepen pre-existing prejudice. Nobody wants a single man with a Muslim name and a long beard staying next to them. “What if he belongs to Simi or IM?” What if he misbehaves with “our women”? Even actor Emraan Hashmi couldn’t escape discrimination.
Every secularist cries in the name of Sachar committee but
none asks, why its recommendations were never implemented. I bet the answers to
this question couldn’t be more interesting. Sachar committee precisely talks on
something that Congress party hates to hear. Sachar committee talks about elevation
of an entire community through education but that hardly seems like a benefit
to Congress’s preserved vote bank. Though all secularists would cry over
non-implemented Sachar committee guidelines, none would question Congress on
its complete disinterest in the implementation part. But again, that is part of
the story. The other and more significant part is where the report clearly
educates all governments, not just Congress, to stay away from rolling out
doles against the lack of facilities for the community. Does the Shehzad
Poonawalas of the world got balls to ask Congress on what ground they so conveniently
ignored this particular suggestion?
Now coming to the stereotyping part. Why I have to think
through my feet to come up with a story so that I can answer my kid on why the
neighbor’s son Salim has four moms while she has only one. I mean I don’t see a
problem in answering but then don’t expect me to hide the facts from my kid and
come up with a fake story. If one finds keeping four wives is as per their
religion then they shouldn’t cry foul if I explain my kid on how a religion
treats women as nothing more than objects and hence keeping four or for that
matter 10 hardly matters. You can’t have the Samosha and eat it too. I agree,
not all Muslims are terrorists but then examples like that Yahoo engineer who
later found out to be an IM operative, makes me feel little uncomfortable. If
an average person sees danger in a beard wielding Muslim, the blame need to be
shared equally, not just on the person who thinks so. I have one regular reader
who once met an engineering graduate who also happens to be the younger brother
of his friend but later on got arrested by Manglore police for having active
participation with anti-India elements. One of my friends, who used to stay in
the same apartment where the Yahoo IM operative was residing, is still in the
shock of his life and I certainly can’t blame him if he gets jittery by the
mere mention of a Muslim name.
He keeps blabbering.
We need a fair housing law that prohibits discrimination in housing, along the lines of the legislation that protects African-Americans from such practices in the US. It must make blockbusting illegal, incentivise developers to create inclusive habitations and ensure that the language used in real estate advertisements is non-discriminatory. Such a law would not only protect Muslims but other vulnerable groups too.
On the employment and education front, India needs the equal opportunity law to be passed with the consent of state governments. Disallowing discriminatory human resource and hiring policies, prescribing affirmative action on economic parameters and mandating the creation of equal opportunity commissions at the state and national levels to monitor practices and ensuring implementation are important steps that must be taken.
Here is a very simple question. In India we don’t have
specific laws for communities except SC and ST. And there are far minor
communities than Muslims in India. For example, the Christians are highly
educated and better placed, so are the Sikhs. Does the secular in Shehzad ever
wondered, why it is the Muslims who are rotting among the minorities? When it
comes to jobs, most of the Muslims simply don’t fit the bill in terms of
qualification and abilities. What Shehzad expects to happen? Muslims getting
hired even if they are far from being capable? Same is the case with education
as well. Does Shehzad expects Muslims to go through IIT and IIM even if they
are not even half the worth? What kind of human resource pool Shehzad wants to
build in national terms? Highly incapable people running around crazy and doing
nothing? I haven’t heard a bigger absurdity than this. Which law was formulated
specifically looking at Christians or Sikhs or Parsis? If not then why there
should be one for the Muslims? Just because Congress fooled them for decades,
Shehzad wants new avenues to fool further should be rolled out? What kind of
logic is this? And when he says fair housing law then one wonders what that one
should be. Is it something like, to supersede one’s personal choice, fear and
prejudice and ask him to abide by something that he is not OK with and which
even looks grossly out of sync with our constitution? Isn’t the freedom of
choice getting hampered right there, Mr. Shehzad Poonawala?
How about Common Civil Code while expecting laws that prohibit discrimination? Can he demand that one too?
ReplyDeleteTaslima Nasreen relocated to USA, Where are these Secularists and Media. Had this been reverse, media and so called secularist would be ready to bark on and continue debates for atleast a week.
ReplyDelete