Eventually one gets habituated to the little tricks and place filters to sift out the propaganda. That said even propaganda is enjoyable if done well and good historians are inevitably superb story tellers. One may declare that the text is all false yet the yarn is beautiful. Yes, sometimes the story is just that good that you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the story.
……………
A hot and fetid June night on the small Mediterranean island of
Malta, and a Christian sentry patrolling at the foot of a fort on the
Grand Harbour had spotted something drifting in the water.

The
alarm was raised. More of these strange objects drifted into view, and
men waded into the shallows to drag them to the shore. What they found
horrified even these battle-weary veterans: wooden crosses pushed out by
the enemy to float in the harbour, and crucified on each was the
headless body of a Christian knight. 

This was psychological warfare at its most brutal, a message sent by
the Turkish Muslim commander whose invading army had just vanquished the
small outpost of Fort St Elmo – a thousand yards distant across the
water.

Now the target was the one remaining fort on the
harbour front where the beleaguered, outnumbered and overwhelmed
Christians were still holding out: the Fort St Angelo. The Turkish
commander wished its defenders to know that they would be next, that a
horrible death was the only outcome of continued resistance.

But
the commander had not counted on the mettle of his enemy – the Knights
of St John. Nor on the determination of their leader Grand Master Jean
Parisot de la Valette, who vowed that the fort would not be taken while
one last Christian lived in Malta.

On news of the
grotesque discovery of the headless knights – many of them his personal
friends – Grand Master Valette quickly ordered that captured Turks
imprisoned deep in the vaulted dungeons of the fort be taken from their
cells, and beheaded one by one.

Then he returned a
communiquè of his own: the heads of his Turkish captives were fired from
his most powerful cannon direct into the Muslim lines. There would be
no negotiation, no compromise, no surrender, no retreat.

We Christians, the Grand Master was saying, will fight to the death and take you with us.

The
Siege of Malta in 1565 was a clash of unimaginable brutality, one of
the bloodiest – yet most overlooked – battles ever fought. It was also
an event that determined the course of history, for at stake was the
very survival of Christianity.

If vitally strategic Malta fell, the Muslim Ottoman Empire would soon dominate the Mediterranean. Even Rome would be in peril.

The
Muslims had hundreds of ships and an army tens of thousands strong. The
Christians were a ragtag bunch of just a few hundred hardbitten knights
and some local peasant soldiers with a few thousand Spanish infantry.
Malta looked doomed.

That the Hospitaller Knights of St
John existed at all was a minor miracle. They were a medieval relic, an
order established originally to look after ailing pilgrims to the Holy
Lands during the Crusades 300 years earlier – other orders of the
Crusades, such as the Knights Templar, had been extinct for
two-and-a-half centuries.

They came from countries all
over Europe: Germany, Portugal, France, Spain. All that united them was a
burning desire to defend Christendom against what they perceived as the
ever-encroaching tide of Islam. Yet by the 16th century, an age of the
increasing power of nation states, these trans-national zealots were
viewed as an embarrassing anachronism by much of Europe.

Already
the Turks had forced them from their earlier home, the island of
Rhodes. Now the knights had moved to Malta – and were threatened once
more.

So savage was the fighting, so mismatched the two
sides and so important the moment, that I chose the Siege of Malta as
the subject of my latest novel, Blood Rock. It was the stage, as we
thriller writers say, for epic and mind-blowing history.

But
as I researched for my book, I came to realise that what happened on
Malta more than 400 years ago is salutary in today’s context. For as we
know only too well, religious extremism, terror tactics and barbarism
still exist.

Malta was no mere siege. It teaches us many
things: the need for courage and steadfastness by an entire populace in
the face of threat; the fragility of peace; and the destructiveness of
religious hate.

Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey
and pitiless ruler of the Ottoman Empire, stared out upon the
glittering waters of the Golden Horn estuary of Istanbul. He was the
most powerful figure on the planet – his titles included Vice-Regent of
God on Earth, Lord of the Lords of East and West – and Possessor of
Men’s Necks on account of his habit of beheading servants who displeased
him.

His realm and absolute remit stretched from
the gates of Vienna to the gardens of Babylon, from Budapest to Aden. He
was one of the richest men of all time who never wore the same clothes
twice, ate off solid gold plates encrusted with jewels, and took his
pleasure in a harem of more than 300 women.

An
octogenarian, he was utterly ruthless, employing an assassination squad
of deaf mutes to strangle traitors. (The reasoning was that they could
never be influenced by the pleas for mercy of their victims, nor tell
any tales.)

Suleiman had used them to dispatch both his
Grand Vizier (his prime minister) and his favourite sons. Less worthy
subjects could be executed by pouring molten lead down their throats.

Yet
by the standards of the day and his own dynastic line he was not
especially violent. 

Other sultans had done worse: one, tiring of his
womenfolk, had drowned his entire harem – some several hundred strong –
in muslin sacks at the bottom of the Bosphorus; a second had written
into the royal prerogative that he could shoot ten or more citizens a
day with his bow and arrows from the roof of his palace.

Suleiman
controlled the greatest fighting force in the world. Before him lay an
armada of 200 ships ready to sail, an army of 40,000 troops on board. He
planned to wipe the barren rock of Malta and the Knights of St John
from the map.

These knights lived by raiding and
disrupting his Ottoman shipping routes. The last straw had been their
capture of the prized ship of his powerful courtier the Chief Black
Eunuch.

Because all his “parts” had been cut off by a
clean sweep of a razor – a metal tube had been inserted into his urethra
and the wound cauterised in boiling oil – the eunuch was also entrusted
to look after Suleiman’s harem.

The Sultan did not expect
undue trouble exacting his revenge. A mere 700 knights stood in his
way. Such a rabble would be quickly cleared.

The Turkish
fleet headed across the Mediterranean in March 1565. Aboard the ships
were the elite janissary shock-troops – the “Invincible Ones” – who had
carried Islam across Europe with the slashing blades of their scimitars.

Accompanying them were the blackplumed cavalry corps and the infantry as well as the drug-crazed Iayalars who
wore the skins of wild beasts and whose raison d’etre was to reach
paradise through death as they slit infidel Christian throats in battle.

In late May 1565, the invasion force arrived at the
island. The knights awaiting them enjoyed good intelligence of their
plans and had asked for assistance from the Christian armies of European
nations. Every kingdom spurned their request – other than Sicily, which
said that if the knights held out, help would eventually come.

You
have probably never heard of Fort St Elmo. It is a small star-shaped
structure sited at the tip of what is now the Maltese capital Valletta
on the north shore of Grand Harbour.

In late May 1565, it
was where the full might of the Turk artillery was unleashed, a hellish
crucible that would forge the future course of our modern age. For days
the invaders pounded the tottering and crumbling edifice, reducing its
limestone walls to rubble, creating a dust cloud. The knights refused to
yield.

At night, Valette sent reinforcements from St
Angelo by boat across Grand Harbour, in the knowledge they were heading
to their deaths.

After the artillery, the attacks went in,
wave upon wave of screaming and scimitar-wielding Turks, trampling over
the bodies of their own slain, laying down ships’ masts to bridge the
debris-filled moat into which the walls of St Elmo had slid.

Each
time they were met by the ragged and diminishing band of defenders,
fighting with pikes and battle-axes, firing muskets and dropping blocks
of stone, throwing fire-hoops that set ablaze the flowing robes of the
Muslims and sent them burning and plummeting to their deaths.

The
fire-hoops – covered in flax and cotton, dipped in brandy and coated
with pitch and saltpetre – were the knights’ own invention. Dropped
blazing over the bastion walls, they could engulf three Turks at a time.

For 30 days, cut off and doomed, the soldiers of St Elmo
prevailed. The Turkish general had expected the fort to fall within
three.

Late at night on Friday June 22, 1565, the few
hundred survivors from an original garrison of 1,500, sang hymns,
offered up prayers, defiantly tolled their chapel bell and prepared to
meet their end the next day.

Those unable to stand were
placed in chairs behind the shattered ramparts, crouching low with their
pikes and swords to await the final assault.

When it
came, and the entire Turkish army descended as a howling mass, the
handful of Christians still managed to fight for several hours.
Eventually the Ottomans took their prize. The crescent banners of the
Grand Turk flew above the ruins, the heads of the knights were raised on
spikes, and the crucified bodies of their officers were floated across
to Fort St Angelo on the far side of the harbour.

The Turks had lost time and up to 8,000 of their crack troops.

Summer
heat was rising, disease and dysentery spread throughout the Muslim
camp, and the dead lay piled around the blackened remnants of the seized
fort. deserted the knights – the princes of Europe had abandoned them.
But Grand Master Valette was not about to quit.

Scenes of
heroism and horror abounded in the terrible days that followed. There
were extraordinary characters: Fra Roberto, the priest who fought on the
battlements with a sword in one hand and a cross in the other; the two
English “gentlemen adventurers” who arrived belatedly from Rome to take
part in the action; Valette himself, who stood unyielding in the breach
and used a spear to battle hand-to-hand against the foe.

Others
had led desperate sallies against the Ottoman, harrying their labour
corps, sniping at commanders, spiking their guns. But the enemy, too,
had their brave and vivid figures. Among them was Dragut, the most
feared corsair of his day, whose skill and dash had served the Sultan
well. A cannonball splinter did for him.

Yet the siege
continued, the target now St Angelo, the final and fortified enclave of
the knights on the southern side of Grand Harbour.

The
Turks tried every twist and tactic in their military manual. They
tunnelled beneath the Christian defences to bury gunpowder and blow the
knights to bits. The Maltese responded with their own mines to blow up
the tunnels and there were terrible skirmishes below ground.

Next
the Turks drew up siege engines, giant towers designed to pour their
infantry direct on to the battlements. The knights removed stones at the
base of the battlement walls so that they could run out cannon through
the openings they had created, and blast the siege engines apart.

On
several occasions those walls were breached, the Turks rushing through
eager to slaughter all in their path. Triumph seemed at hand but they
found too late that the knights had improvised an ambush, creating a
killing zone into which they were funnelled and slaughtered.

Success
for the Turks was slipping away. The furnace temperatures of July and
August sapped morale and strength; the sense of failure clung as
pervasively as the surrounding stench of death.

The Turks’
commander, Mustapha Pasha, marched inland to take the walled city of
Mdina, only to withdraw when scouts informed him of its substantial and
well-armed garrison. It was a trick. Mdina was largely undefended, its
governor ordering women and children to don helmets, carry pikes and
patrol the walls.

Frantic, with casualties mounting and
autumn storms looming, the Turks rolled a giant bomb – a fiendish
barrel-shaped object packed with gunpowder and musketballs – into the
Christian positions.

The knights promptly rolled it back
and it blew a devastating hole in the massed and waiting Muslim ranks.
It rained. Believing the gunpowder of the knights to be damp, their
muskets and cannon useless, Mustapha Pasha again sent his troops
forward.

They were met by a hail of not only crossbow
bolts but gunfire, for Valette had anticipated such an moment, setting
aside stores of dry powder.

Finally, relief reached the
knights in the form of a small army from Sicily. Believing the enemy
reinforcements too weak to be of any consequence, Mustapha Pasha angrily
ordered his troops – who had bolted on hearing of the new arrivals – to
turn back and march towards them. It was the last of his many grave
blunders.

The cavalry of the relief force charged, then
the infantry, tearing into the Turkish centre, putting it to flight.
Rout turned to bloodbath. The once-proud Ottoman force scrambled in
disarray for its ships, pursued across the island, cut down and picked
off at every step. Thousands died and the waters of St Paul’s Bay ran
red.

Of the 40,000 troops that had set sail in the spring
from Constantinople, only some ten thousand made it home. Behind them
they had left a scene of utter devastation.

Almost the
entire garrison commanded by Jean Parisot de Valette – after whom the
city of Valletta is named – had perished. Now, after 112 days of siege,
the ragged handful of survivors limped through the blitzed wreckage of
their lines.

Malta was saved, for Europe and Christianity. The Knights of St John had won.

History
has moved on – the island withstood another siege which played a key
role in the saving of civilisation in the 1940s, this time against
Hitler’s forces. Today, the hotel and apartment developers have moved
in. Rarely is the 1565 Great Siege of Malta mentioned. Hardly ever do
visitors to the island dwell on such an ancient and forgotten incident.

But
I have stood in that tiny chapel recessed in the walls of Fort St Elmo,
the very place where defenders took their last holy sacrament on a June
night long ago. We owe those knights.

Their sacrifice was
immense, their effect on our lives more profound than we may know. 

Yet
religious fanaticism continues, and global powers will still fight over a
piece of barren rock. Perhaps we never really learn.
•
Blood Rock by James Jackson is published by John Murray at £11.99.
……..
Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-466818/Historys-bloodiest-siege-used-human-heads-cannonballs.html

……

regards

There is a good and bad part of this “boosting.” The good part is that the value of being a minority, of increasing diversity is not (often) questioned. The bad part is that well, things are really not what they seem to be. The most egalitarian ideology fails the acid test of the caste system/biradiri. And the most useful test is to observe how behavior patterns change when the minority becomes a (local) majority.

The best (worst) example is the case of the North-East (Naga) Christians who have often led blockades of Manipur valley (mostly Hindus) including one mega-blockade which went on for 250 (+) days. It was part extortion and part black-mailing and full-scale terrorism. Sick people could not reach hospitals, children could not get to schools and the common people suffered terribly. Of course these incidents barely ever reach the national press let alone international press. 

“The life has reached its most difficult stage without food and
essential commodities. There is acute shortage of fuel, which has
affected students not being able to go to schools and colleges.
Hospitals have run out of oxygen, there is shortage of medicines,” it
said.

http://www.christiantoday.co.in/articles/christians-urged-to-pray-for-peace-in-manipur/5373.htm

Then there are the Sikhs, who in our opinion are the most outstanding people on earth. They have been horribly victimized in Partition I and again due to Mrs Gandhi’s machinations in the 1970s culminating with the high crimes of 1984 (we tend not to over-use the word genocide).

Frankly speaking our (wrongly held) opinion of the Akali Dal was that it is a grass-roots organization run by a passionate and close-knit circle. But we had no idea that it is basically just one family which controls every switch on the switch-board. At this level it is akin to Shiv Sena, one organization we are a bit more familiar with. Stereotypes are still mostly true, but the Akali Dal is just another SAsian “family business.”

……

……
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579544033543762254
……
regards

The letter that Amad has written – please read it first (in green) before coming back to our response (in pink) – carries our personal recommendation (in strongest terms) with some important caveats. We love (sincerely) people who do not hold back their thoughts and want to engage politely and positively even with (what they would consider) evil people.

That is a big big plus in today’s (online) world (where participants are only there to shout). This is in particular a problem with Desis and in this context we are always reminded of the famous, original BP saying from the one and only Sahar: SAsians are all on the short bus (meaning we have achieved very little, given our undeniable potential).

(1) Generally agreed that India-Pak is of great interest to many people but on the overall geo-politics scale we feel it is not so important. The fact that both sides are nuclear armed actually contributes to a lot of stability. Even in the worst case scenario of another Mumbai like attack, India is not able to do much except crying Uncle Sam (same as last time). As far as USA is concerned, East Asia (China vs. the rest), East Europe (Russia vs. the rest) and Middle East North Africa (MENA, Benghazi anyone?) are of much greater (and immediate) interest.

(2) Right now things look terrible for Pak vis-a-vis India, but in (not-so) earlier decades the boot was on the other foot, Pakistan was ahead by a mile, and that wheel can turn once more in the future.

(3) We strenuously disagree. (mis)Treatment of minorities is always a concern, it cannot be de-registered as an actions item simply because the country is going through a crisis. 

(4) It is always great news when people hire other people, also biased selections (muslims only) usually do not work out, the person you may be short-charging the most is yourself.

(5-9) Excellent, but with (very long and tedious) caveats. While Godhra should never, ever be used as a pretext it should not be brushed under the carpet as well. The complete back-story of Hindu-Muslim enmity must be honestly discussed as well. Many (millions) more Hindus and Muslims have been killed over the last few decades than in Gujarat 2002, for the sole reason that SAsian elites (Ummah-first, Dharma-first) have not figured out a just and fair way to co-exist. 

It is our humble but considered opinion that ideologies are more poisonous than events. And one of  the most pernicious ideologies that both U-F and D-F elites hold on strongly to is the two nation theory, which says in effect that Hindus and Muslims cant ever co-exist. One line which summarizes (for us) the power of TNT is the famous dictum: the heroes of one community are the villains of the other. On the face of it that charge is true enough. 

The TNT tinted fault-line in history becomes apparent if you consider the case of Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh (there are a million other examples). It is our personal (fantasy) belief that if the line of Dara Shikoh was not terminated so brutally, India would have stayed for-ever under Muslim rule, and approximate to something like Indonesia today. Again it does not matter that Aurangzeb employed many Hindus (non-Muslims!!!) who even fought against other Hindus, in today’s lingo, Hindus see him as a hater while Muslims consider him as a savior. No amount of marxist re-interpretations (by Romila Thapar, Sumit Sarkar, Ayesha Jalal and others) will change this basic and deeply held conviction.

Today in Bangladesh we have muslims who are separated by their version of TNT. Mujib is a hero for half the country, villain for the other half. There is no end to misery because of theory.

We dont pretend to have a vaccine for TNT, but there should have been a Truth and Reconciliation Commission taking entire South Asia in its ambit and solved this problem to the satisfaction of the respective majorities. We believe, if Gandhi and Jinnah were alive this may have been possible. The next generation politicians have been all pygmies and the lobbies for eating grass and fighting for 1000 years in both countries are too powerful. All peace initiatives are doomed before they start. This is the challenge in SAsia going forward.

Speaking just for India, as long as there is a cold war with Pakistan (because that is what it really is, except on the LOC where there is a hot war) and a perceived bleed by a thousand cuts strategy deployed by Pakistan, Indian muslims will always be viewed by Hindus (and others) with suspicion. If that is an unpleasant thought, consider the case of an advanced nation like Northern Ireland (UK) and tell us why they have not been able to move beyond ghettos and hating and violence.

If we really believe that TNT is self-evident and unchangeable (and even something to be applauded) then BJP’s case for a Hindu India becomes unanswerable. The only thing that has till now protected muslims was the full faith and belief in their role as king-makers. This is why this election was so crucial. Muslims gave it their best shot and the majority still united to crush them (electorally). This is why Pankaj Mishra is so angry about the neo-Hindus, the OBC-shudras in urban and semi-rural areas who swung the election to the BJP. 

There will be no more high crimes like 2002 (of this we are almost sure). Indeed there may be less violence now that a Hindu party is in the ruling chair. But there will be a million ways that the minority community will be squeezed.

Take one important example. Given the dire economic situation of Indian (non-Ashraf) muslims, it is most desirable to have targeted reservations for muslims in education and in jobs. Affirmative action has done wonders for Dalits and Shudras, if nothing else it gives hope to the hope-less. However in this polarized atmosphere it will just not happen. Muslims will keep sliding backwards vis-a-vis all other communities.Riots are visible beasts, it is the invisible stuff (acts of omission) that is so bothersome.

(10) Modi ban: Please read the background by Zahir Janmohammed as well as the coverage in the Wall Street Journal. The ban on Modi was an unique event. It happened because it was considered a smart way to pacify muslims (human rights lobby as well as the GWB administration) and it also appealed to the much more powerful Christian lobby which worried greatly about Hindutva. 

(10a) That said, we dont question Modi’s role in the riots and in the aftermath, only a (morally) blind person can. It is the old question: were you criminally negligent or were you horribly incompetent (or both)? That question answers itself. The Supreme Court should have simply barred Modi from holding high office pending clearance of all charges. Then we would have all been better off.

(11) Godhra: ruled as an accident. Now you face the same charge as above (10a) and we mean it. It has been (mis)reported in a similar manner in many media outlets and by (biased) journalists who certainly know better than to propagate false-hoods. This is Wiki: 

The commission set up by the Government of Gujarat
to investigate the train burning spent 6 years going over the details
of the case, and concluded that the fire was arson committed by a mob of
1000-2000 people,
A commission appointed by the central government, whose appointment was
later held to be unconstitutional, stated that the fire had been an
accident. A court convicted 31 Muslims for the incident and the conspiracy for the crime, although the actual causes of the fire have yet to be proven conclusively.

It is an ugly, ugly story but basically the Gujarat Govt and the (then) Central Govt both played politics with the commissions. The truth was pre-determined before a single word was penned down. However the courts are a different matter altogether. If people say that the court judgement was biased (and they are within their rights to say so) then they should be making that argument, not a false/malicious/ignorant one that “it was ruled an accident.”

(11a) Having said that we are in complete agreement with you that Godhra does not justify anything. I am sure if the powers that be gave an ultimatum to the local leaders (and the stakes made clear) the murderers would have surrendered on their own.

(12) Agree whole-heartedly with every word. But remember what we said in (5-9). Why do you expect Hindus to show empathy when the Pakistan National Assembly states that every year 5000 Hindus are leaving Pakistan and the rest face forcible conversion or death. To a lesser extent the same thing is happening in Bangladesh. For sure, Indian muslims are not responsible for the plight of Pakistani Hindus. But the violence and the misery will only stop when both sides stop clapping. To demand one-sided empathy from Hindus is an immoral demand. For sure.

respectfully yours and with regards,

(a mango man in a banana republic)
…………….
Dear Friend,

Let this Pakistani-American first congratulate you on what went right
in the Indian Elections 2014— clean and fair voting in the world’s
largest democracy. I wish and pray that democracies in neighboring
Pakistan, Bangladesh and newer ones around the globe can emulate this
achievement one day.


Now let me address some of the things that may bother you about me writing this:

• That this is an Indian matter, who are you to talk about it?
• Why don’t you focus on Pakistan, where minorities are far worse off and there is so much extremism and turmoil there?
• You are biased against Indians and/or non-Muslim Indians.

(1) In today’s age of globalization, the leader of India is as important
as the leader of other global super-powers. His economic policies will
directly impact global growth, and his political policies will directly
impact his neighbors, including Pakistan (note: my parents live only a
few miles away from the Indian border). I hope we can agree that this
isn’t just an Indian matter.


(2) On the second point, I agree with you that Pakistan is far behind on
most aspects of a successful nation. To be honest, this is not much of a
competition anymore; India is in a different league now.


(3) As for minorities in Pakistan, no doubt that the treatment of
minorities is atrocious, but for a country teetering on the edge of
failure, you must agree that this is hardly the highest priority. Most
importantly, do you really want your country to be measured against the
failures of others? On a “Pakistan sucks more” scale?


(4) Thirdly, while prejudice against Indians has been rooted deeply in
most Pakistanis (and vice-versa), I hope and pray that we are moving
beyond the political roots of such hatred, especially those of us who
have lived in Western democracies and have befriended many Indians. And I
tend to walk the talk. When given the opportunity, I hired two Indians
to work for me, not both Muslims.


(5) I hope we can now focus on the message. You must admit that there are
wide-ranging concerns about BJP, and about Narendra Modi specifically.
As a member of the global community first, I would be concerned about
the rise of political right, be it in USA, Europe or India. Just as Le
Pen concerns me in France, similarly a party whose election manifesto
included building a temple on a disputed site in India concerns me
deeply. Not just for the Muslim minority in India, but also for what the
party’s impact could be on the global scene.


(6) I understand that you are really excited about the rise of Modi, and
that you believe he will take the country in a new economic direction. I
am sure that like many fair-minded Indian supporters of BJP, your
interest is not the subjugation of the Muslim minority.

(7) But there is a reason that so many Muslims are concerned about Modi.
It is not that all these Muslims hate India, it just cannot be. I am
sure that you have known enough Muslims in your life to know that the
vast majority of Indian Muslims love their country.

(8) We must address the elephant in the room—the Gujarat massacres,
although that is only the tip of the iceberg. You might think it has
been a long time since this horrible event, but do you believe it is a
long time for those who were torched alive and the families that they
left behind? Please see this documentary to be reminded of the horror. (Click here and continue seeing rest by going to this channel)


(9) Now you might say that the Supreme Court exonerated Modi and while
you would not be callous enough to bring up “Muslims burned passengers
in Godhra first”, I know that is something many others are indeed
bringing up.

(10) As for the Supreme Court decision, I admit Modi was given a clean chit. However, where there is smoke, there is likely fire (read this report from Tehelka).
It could not be that USA/UK barred Modi simply on whims, especially
since the Muslim lobby is hardly a force in the West. Even the Supreme
Court-appointed amicus curiae, Raju Ramachandran, observed on 7 May 2012
that Modi could be prosecuted for promoting enmity among different
groups during the 2002 Gujarat riots. At the least, most observers note
that Modi could have done more, and at least not inflamed emotions
further by not bringing back charred bodies of Hindu passengers from Godhra.

(11) As for the massacres being simply an act of vengeance, then you must
agree that that is a disgusting response. First of all, the Godhra fire
was ruled as an accident.
Even if it wasn’t, no fair-minded individual would allow killing of one
set of people for the crimes of others, even in vengeance! This sort of
mentality is no different from Al-Qaeda terrorists, who feel that they
are justified in killing all Americans because some Americans killed
some other Muslims.

Moving past 2002 massacres, had Modi simply done more to promote
communal harmony and not created a system of apartheid in areas of
Gujarat, one might be tempted to forgive him in the name of larger
interest. But he didn’t do much at all. He only visited the camps of
Muslims displaced by the Gujarat violence once. In this election, of the
nearly 450 BJP candidates, only 8, less than 2% are Muslims (vs. 15% in
the population) were Muslims, and the astronomic economic growth in
Gujarat seems to have escaped Muslim residents. As Basharat Peer’s article in NY Times illustrates:

But Ahmedabad ceases to swagger in Juhapura, a
southwestern neighborhood and the city’s largest Muslim ghetto, with
about 400,000 people…Mr. Modi’s engines of growth seem to have stalled
on The Border. His acclaimed bus network ends a few miles before
Juhapura.

And many Muslims are forced to live in Juhapura because separation of
Muslim/Hindus is systemized by the “Disturbed Areas Act”, which
restricts Muslims and Hindus from selling property to each other in
“sensitive” areas, areas that have been extended further and further as a
form of social engineering. My friend, can you imagine such a law in
any Western democracy?

Another article quotes the former editor of The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper,

“Many of the things that are evil about India are not
going to find their solution with Mr. Modi,” Mr. Varadarajan said. “If
anything, they’ll get worse.”

(12) You might dismiss all these aforementioned reasons as Western or
worse Muslim propaganda. Or you might have good reasons to believe that
Modi as a national leader will move past communal biases.


However, I would like you to take a moment to empathize with those who are concerned.

Empathy is indeed very difficult
as you will have to put yourself in the shoes of concerned Indian
Muslims, concerned liberals (Muslims and non-Muslims) around the world
and feel what they are feeling. Many of us have nothing but good wishes
for India as a strong India is good for the world, not just for Indians.


So please spare us some benefit of doubt for what are real and valid
concerns and remember that the oppression by the majority is just as bad
as the usurpation of the majority.
……
Link: http://muslimmatters.org/2014/05/19/an-open-letter-to-modi-supporter-indian-friend-on-bjp-indian-election-victory-from-a-pakistani-american-muslim/
…….
regards

1a. We also have a “welcome Naveen” message from the BB

2. Please keep your titles short (else they run over on the right side).

welcome to BP and all the best with your postings.

warm regards, sid