For a person who considers himself a research scientist, the author displays a singular lack of such qualities. The CSF is not some shadowy organisation. It has a website with its contact details and email ID prominently displayed. Any person who is sincere and honest in his intentions and does not carry any ideological baggage or religious bias could have found this website with a simple google search without the need of assistance of anyone else.
Further, the author uses such assumptions and presumptions that will lead to conclusions that he has already decided in advance. To give an illustration: if one is asked a question like - " Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whichever way one will answer it, one is guilty. A person genuinely interested in researching, would have referred to the various commission reports which have already been published, spent some time on ground zero interviewing the victims, interacting and mingling with them, speaking to the co-villagers / neighbours, understanding the nuances and literally getting under the skin to find out whether the incidents are borne out of religious persecution or mere law & order problems which affect everyone. The report in the Times of India also contained statements of Justice Michael Saldanha and Mr Harsh Mander, two well known persons of the highest integrity and repute. A genuine researcher would have taken the trouble to contact them and request them to share their experiences and data, more so as they work on ground zero. One was an ex- IAS officer till recently a member of the National Advisory Council and who worked in Gujarat during the 2002 pogrom and the other is a retired Judge of the Bombay and Karnataka High Court who has investigated and submitted his reports to the Govt and other Commissions. Under the circumstances, I am not surprised by the conclusions of such armchair researchers. In fact I would have been astonished if the converse was concluded. One cannot expect better from a person who sought to defend / justify the rapes, murders, destruction of places of worship / property of innocent victims just because he was an apologist / sympathizer of the ideology of the aggressors. As I said in my earlier post, one can only forgive such persons and pray for them in the way Christ showed us. Regards, Marshall S*antosh Helekar*<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]&q=from:%22Santosh+Helekar%22>* Mon, 27 Jan 2014 01:36:13 -0800 <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]&q=date:20140127>* *As you know I had asked for clarifications on this year's persecution report put out by the Christian religio-political organization misnamed Catholic Secular Forum. Because of my longstanding skepticism towards religio-political activists manipulating public opinion, especially among their coreligionists, in the service of their own religious chauvinistic and ideological agenda, the questions that I ask about such reports are:*
