ALI SUKHANVER
Will Mr. Modi succeed in winning the hearts of the Muslims in India? Will it be possible for the Muslims to forget the days when the streets of Gujarat were flooding with their blood during the reign of Mr. Modi? Will they forget the horrible nights when the Hindu extremists were pulling them out of their houses and slaughtering them like animals? No certainly not, they would forget nothing but Modi sahib thinks they have a very weak memory. Now-a-days, a video clip of him is getting viral and viral on social media; certainly the credit of making this clip viral goes to the media team of Mr. Modi. The clip shows Mr. Modi addressing a huge crowd of general public. During his speech, at once Azaan started coming from a nearby mosque. Mr. Modi simply stopped his speech and waited for the Azaan to end up. The crowd included a large number of Muslims too. They all started clapping and raising slogans in favor of Mr. Modi. Someone among the crowd said talking to the media, “Modi sahib is a symbol of inter-faith unity and harmony in India.” The Indian media also took full advantage of Modi’s timely action of stopping his speech in honour of the Azaan and started a very well organized media move to portray Mr. Modi as a very moderate rather a secular leader of India. It is a very good effort on the part of Indian media but what to do with the horrible memories of 2002 when the Muslims of Gujarat had to cross a river of their own blood. Aditya Chakrabortty is a senior economics commentator for the Guardian. He penned down an article on 7th April 2014 in which he said, “Narendra Modi, a man with a massacre on his hands, is not the reasonable choice for India. It looks likely that Modi will be India’s next prime minister. But his apologists can’t dismiss the facts about his rule as chief minister of Gujarat. He bears a responsibility for some of the worst religious violence ever seen in independent India.” Now the same Modi Sahib is trying to win the hearts of the ever-crushed Muslims of India by stopping his address in honour of Azaan. However we must appreciate the role of Indian media for introducing Modi Sahib as a moderate and secular leader. In this modern world of us, media is no doubt the strongest weapon and certainly the most fatal one too as it has ‘earned’ the skill and ability of painting good into bad and bad into good. Today, if Pakistan is introduced as a land of religious extremists and India as a secular state, it is simply the result of the same media-talent. In other words it is the defeat of Pakistani media particularly the electronic media that a true and positive picture of Pakistan could not be conveyed to the world.
Mr. Modi is the most horrible example of religious extremism at state level, as he has the Gujarat Massacre of 2002 to his credit. That was the time when more than 1,000 Muslims were brutally butchered by the Hindu extremists under the ‘kind’ command of the Chief Minister of Gujarat Mr. Modi. Though Mr. Modi has always denied his involvement in that massacre but the investigators have another story to tell. Sanjiv Bhatt, a senior police officer said in his sworn statement to India’s Supreme Court that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi deliberately allowed anti-Muslim riots in the state. He said in his statement that he had attended a meeting at which Mr. Modi had said that the Hindus should be allowed to give vent to their anger. Sanjiv Bhatt was that time posted at the Gujarat intelligence bureau. Because of that posting he got a chance of gathering large amounts of information before and during the violence. He said in his statement that he had attended an official meeting the night before the riots. In that meeting Mr. Modi told the officials that the Muslim community needed to be taught a lesson. It is not Mr. Modi alone; there are so many others also in BJP, more poisonous and more lethal. Shailesh Mehta is also one of them. He is a BJP candidate from Gujrat. Addressing a crowd during his recent election campaign, he said, “If any ‘topi, daarhiwala’ (anybody wearing a cap and sporting beard means Muslim) is sitting here in the crowd, pardon me, but there is a need to reduce their population. Many leaders asked me not to say this, as it may go against me, but if 90 per cent of people are supporting me, why should I stop speaking about the 10 per cent people?”