SOROOR AHMED comments on the recent attack on a Mangalore pub and concludes that it is one of the strategies of the Sangh Parivar and its allies to hide their real design.
Devils know the trick of winning the mass support, especially when everyone is against them. They are canny and shrewd. And there is no dearth of people taken away by their crafty design. Even our tainted officials and politicians have perfected this art well.
When former Chief Election Commissioner, T N Seshan’s name started figuring in the Bofors bribery case, he acted quickly to deflect the attention of the common masses, and to earn their goodwill, launched his so-called electoral reforms crusade. Similarly, when the former DGP of Punjab, K P S Gill, got embroiled in the bottom-pinching case – in a party the drunken super-cop pinched the bottom of a lady IAS officer – he decided to go all out against the militants in that state and thus become a hero.
Very recently when Narendra Modi found himself being outcast by the civilized world following his role in the Gujarat mayhem of 2002, he cooked up a new formula to show to the world that he is the most development-minded chief minister of the country. The fact, on the other hand, is that Gujarat under him declined rather than grew. Not to speak of other data, which show that Gujarat is definitely not doing very well, the GDP theory he often quotes itself exposes Modi’s performance.
In 1994-95 Gujarat had the growth rate of 13.2 per cent when neither Modi nor his party was in power. The country’s growth rate was just half of that figure. In 2006-07, at the peak of the Modi era Gujarat’s growth rate was less than 12 per cent. The country’s GDP was almost 10 per cent. Yet the industrialists and media barons, instead of projecting this decline, are busy raising him to the sky for their own business interests.
The need of the hour is to expose the bluff of such individuals or outfits. The original sin can, in no case, be condoned. Even if Gujarat might have really developed under him, how can he be cleared of the crime he had committed against humanity?
So when the goons of Shri Ram Sena went all out against the girls in the pubs in Mangalore, they in fact wanted to earn the goodwill of many Indians, who decry this decadent western culture. Similar hooliganism would be enacted by the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in Mumbai on the occasion of St Valentine’s Day on February 14. With their hypocritical acts they want to earn cheap popularity and show to the world that they are the real custodians of the Indian culture.
The truth is that they are frauds and killers of innocent people, be it on the streets of Mumbai in 1992-93 or Malegaon in 2007-08 or any other place. They are among those who have played an important role in encouraging the culture of alcoholism and rampant consumerism in India. And just to hoodwink the innocent masses they, from time to time, keep enacting such dramas. Instead of attacking the defenceless girls – true, they might have been doing wrong to the so-called Indian culture – they must first have targeted the office of the BJP chief minister of Karnataka who is allowing such pubs to run in the state.
The governments of the BJP and its allies – from Gujarat to Bihar – are promoting alcoholism and crass consumerism, yet simultaneously they fund and promote different Senas to keep the people in the dark about their real design. It is not that other parties are imposing prohibition or checking consumerism, but they are at least not maintaining double standard, not taking law into their hands and not attacking boys and girls in the name of culture.
What did the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance actually do to check the growth of consumerism in the name of St Valentine when they were in power in Maharashtra for full one term in the mid-1990s? What was their role in Goa? They did everything to encourage it and earn money. What is happening in Gandhi’s Gujarat? How many wine factories have Modi destroyed in the land of prohibition? What about Rajasthan where the former BJP chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, herself walked on the ramp of a fashion show. Yet they talk of swadeshi culture!
Now take the example of Bihar, where the Janata Dal (United) and the BJP are jointly in power. From July 1, 2007 the Nitish Kumar government introduced a new excise policy and doubled the number of wine shops. Now the state has over 13,500 wine shops and there is perhaps not a single panchayat in the state, which does not have any liquor shop. The purpose is simple: to increase the excise earning from Rs 300 crore to 700 crore a year. Here the chairman of the State Haj Committee, Jamshed Ashraf, has been made the Excise Minister while the Excise Secretary is Amir Subhani, a senior IAS officer with flowing beard and association with Tablighi Jamaat. The purpose is simple. As these two teetotallers do not drink and have nothing to do with liquor, all the money involve in issuing licence for the wine shops go to those who are at the helm of affairs in the state.
The tragedy is that instead of exposing the Sangh Parivar’s double-standard our western-minded media, with open business interest, and even feminists waste their time and energy in propagating the individual freedom to eat, drink and dress in his/her own way. Going to pub is certainly not a licence for modernity and development as the media tries to make us believe.
What is strange is that very often many Islamists get trapped into this fascist design and start lending support, direct or indirect, to them. They overlook the fact that many of the liquor barons fund the BJP or its allies in the election. The weakness for wine of many BJP bigwigs is a known fact. Who is not aware that the owner of one of the biggest wine firm, Vijay Mallaya, got Rajya Sabha ticket from the Janata Dal (United), a partner of the BJP. He is also from Karnataka, where these (im)moral policemen went on rampage recently.