When Swaminathan Aiyar Lost His Marvels To Pseudo Secularism

Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations & outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist 

             –Sashi Tharoor

I am sure Swaminathan Aiyar could have uttered the above sentence and still would have made as much sense as he did with his latest piece in ‘Times Of India’. SA generally is a decent and well-articulated writer and most of the time does justice to his opinion pieces. But then, his earlier posts were on economics and economic policies. All the more reason why I thought people should stick to the job they do best. But alas, it seems the urge to jump into the prevailing ‘Liberal Bandwagon’ has got the better of SA finally. One fine morning the erudite SA wakes up and thinks – “Aaj Kuch Toofani Karte Hain” and churns out a piece that neither makes sense nor makes any concrete statement. All he managed to achieve from his ‘rant’ is he, now is in the astute league of the well-known liberal brigades of this nation, even if that means ditching his area of interest, that is Economics, and dishing out some nonsense on secularism. If you want to go over SA’s meaningless piece you can do this here before moving ahead with this post. Over this post we will try to understand the mind-set of SA while writing this rant because I know for a fact that SA is a non-smoker. So we can’t claim him being too high over the weekend to whip out such truculent stuff. It has to be something else. So let’s see from where SA starts his transformation to an ‘Indian Secularist’, if I may coin the phrase.

In fact SA was desperate from the heading of his post itself. He was so desperate to make his mark as an upcoming secularist and set the tone upfront that he messed it up with his post’s title to start with. It goes something like – Those who sow Hindu terror will reap Muslim terror. This could be easily the funniest whataboutery I ever have read. Not alone funny, there is a blunder (read monumental hypocrisy) in the heading too. SA tried to paint terrorism as a reactionary phenomenon while the truth is far from being that. It is the terror apologists who employ their fertile imagination to concoct reasons for the rise in ‘Radical Islam’, whatever that means but the rest of the world knows where the exact problem lies. These are the same chaps who rather debate on the rising ‘Islamphobia’ post every terror attack than being concerned for those who lost their lives. SA falls to the same trap in justifying, though not in as many words, the Islamic fundamentalists in disguise of some shoddy and laughable excuses. These terrorists work for their religion and only escapists like SA who would prefer to stay away from this truth. The best way to sweep truth under the carpet is to come up with bizarre reasoning in response and put a frantic attempt at painting terrorism as a reactionary object. At this juncture I might as well advice SA to read few and specific religious books to know where this hatred for the human race not belonging to your faith is emanating. He may still chose to live in his ‘La-la-land’ but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground.

Let’s see what is the next set of hypocrisy that lies ahead from the pen of mighty SA though nothing could be more hypocritical than the title of the post forthcoming from him.

Going by this definition, the lynch mobs that beat up and kill people suspected of carrying beef are terrorists. So too are Muslim lynch mobs killing policemen in Kashmir. All these lynch mobs are unlawful, use violence against civilians, and have religio-political goals. They fit the definition of “terrorist” like a glove. 

It didn’t take much beyond the second paragraph for SA to furnish the first meaningless stanza of his post. This is precisely how the secularists whitewash the terrorists – they compare apples with Swami Nithyananda. Had SA thought of being logical before smoking out this stanza he would have cared to go over few statistics first. A quick glance on Google search would lead you to the number of people who were killed by these terrorists compared to those being lynched in the name of beef in last twenty years. I am sure the difference is staggering enough for even blinds like SA to see. This is not all. These terrorists aren’t just a problem with India. They are a menace across the globe. How many lynching these so called ‘Gaurakhshaks’ have done in London or Paris or Brussels? But facts never excite the apologists hence SA preferred to make a vague comparison to establish this age old falsehood and we must give that much to him and his clan of noise makers. But before we move ahead, it is only interesting to point here the reason why DySP Aayub Pundit was lynched in Srinagar. He was lynched because he was perceived to be a Hindu. Hope SA is aware of this particular part in the whole lynching saga of Srinagar.

SA further jumps into more hypocrisy and starts to designate ghastly acts as per religion. Let’s see what his next hypocrisy is.

The murder of 15-year-old Junaid Khan, for the crime of simply being a Muslim, has been condemned — after a typical long pause that will not discourage mobs — by Modi. Many of his ministers have also issued condemnations. Yet the lynch mobs have not appeared out of a vacuum: they have grown in a socio-political climate created by three years of BJP rule.

How on earth SA knows that Junaid Khan was killed because he was a Muslim? Didn’t I say the apologists concoct stories from thin air? It is quite clear from the investigation that the fight that resulted in the murder erupted because of a dispute regarding seats. Even the victim's family authenticated the same. So how does the victim’s religion managed to sneak into SA’s hypocritical abhorrence? Second thing, the main culprit in the murder is a Muslim himself. So how far the claim of Junaid Khan got killed because of his Muslim religion makes a semantic sense here? Or Muslims kill Muslims because they are Muslims is what SA is trying to prove? I mean it could be true as we are seeing in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere but has this phenomenon already reached Indian shores as well? This is how people like SA make a fool of themselves. They make a statement based on their own imagination without bothering for a second to look around for facts. They similarly cried for the Jharkhand lynching but crawled back to their rat holes when it became clear that few of the lynched were Hindus too. Blaming Modi and BJP for creating the so called ‘Socio-Political’ atmosphere is another standard nonsense that every Lutynes crawler of late is catching on to. Once when I asked a typical apologist to share some numbers to back his claims, I was confronted with a staunch ‘Go, find for yourself’ narrative. This is precisely that reflects the charlatanism these selfsame liberals want to exercise. When cornered they even blabber more incoherent lies for response. By the way, ask the likes of SA to say in the same breath, the Amarnath Yatris were killed because they were Hindus, and I bet, most of these cowards, not just SA, would start crawling back to their rat holes forever or till the time some farcical ‘Not In My Name’ nonsense is organized.

In the next paragraph SA employs his imagination again to come up with another baseless stanza. Let’s see how SA failed himself again.

My fear is that, unless checked quickly, Hindu terror will be met with Muslim terror, and the country will go up in flames. If the state cannot protect Muslims, there is a high risk that they will devise their own armed squads for protection. Hindu-Muslim terror can escalate with the state a helpless spectator.

Dear SA, if you are hallucinating, which you probably are, please look around, wake up from your slumber – Islamic terrorism is already pissing right on your face. Stop talking in future tense. The nasty spectacle of Islamic terrorism is a clear and present danger, started long before even these ‘Gaurakhshaks’ were born or for that matter, even before the Indian state started banning beef. A Hindu majority country can’t have its Hindus visit their place of worship without the fear of getting killed and you are talking about the society being up in flames in future? It is unfortunately a fact of the present with or without ‘Hindu Terror’, whatever that means. Radical Islam is a resultant of hate-filled preaching that is capable of only germinating inhuman mind-set, not because the state can’t protect Muslims. Had this been true, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn’t have been in flames. Stop smoking weed if you have started of late. The radicals don’t need an excuse to form their squads because they already have done it a long time ago. Remember 1971 Munich Olympics? What made them kill those innocent athletes? Was it because of Hindu terror or RSS or Modi or because India didn’t protect its Muslims? Rubbishes generally don’t qualify as sane articulation, provided you aren’t in the lookout for a Congress spokesperson’s job. So stop your hallucination; that would probably help you see the truth far more clearly.

SA finishes his post with another set of whataboutery which is equally hilarious, if not more, as the post title itself. He minces no words or sheds no shamelessness in propelling the standard falsehood of the liberals once again.

They were a reaction to the anti-Muslim riots that followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the Shiv Sena’s maha-aarti riots of January 1993. Thirteen bomb blasts hit prominent locations including the Shiv Sena’s headquarters. Fortunately, violence did not ratchet up further, and communal tempers gradually eased.

This is some hypocrisy to reckon with. That said the astounding consistency in every liberal’s narrative must be lauded. They are so pathetically predictable with their narratives that you can bet your lifelong savings on the way they would explain the rise of Islamic terrorism vis-à-vis India. Surprisingly, the India before 1992 and Babri Mosque is a big blackhole for every apologist. For them India never existed before 1992. That is perhaps the reason why they fail to cite the reason why Kashmir Pundits were cleansed out from the valley. What was the trigger point for the killing of innocent KPs? Though I know he is bluffing and don't have any answers to the question I would ask now but nonetheless it is worth an attempt if SA, being so insightful, may just answer it. He seems to have knowledge of all the reasons why Islamic terrorism germinated in India so he must be aware why KPs were killed in masses, their women were raped, and their houses were burnt. Was there a mosque being demolished in the valley by Hindus before KP exodus happened in 1989? Or were BJP and Modi in power for a short while before the ethnic cleansing started? Or SA finds this particular act of Muslims in the valley not qualified to be called as terrorism? As I said, people like SA make a fool of themselves at ease. They pick a thread and build their imagination around it, facts notwithstanding. This is not only shameless but a whole lot charlatan too. In the process they forget, they actually are justifying terrorism in the most absurd manner. A mosque’s demolition justifies the killing of innocents in hundreds in their world. This is how they in unison, not only fail the nation but even fail their minimal sane point of views. By the way, none of these apologists yet to explore the reason why guns, killing innocents and spreading terror in the name of religion is so dear to a particular community. I don’t read how Jews leaped into terrorism since the entire world oppressed their race for half a century in the past. I am sure many of their places of worship were destroyed by their oppressors, not just a single Babri Mosque.

By the way dear Swaminathan Aiyar, since we are at it, let me pass you an information – seven Amaranath yatris were killed and dozen others are injured by the reactionary terror portent of the valley that raised its head because of the 1992 demolition of Babri Mosque.