Marshall Mendonca wrote: "Sorry Sandeep you have got the plot all horribly wrong. I am not a professional mourner. Nor do I have any axe to grind with Santosh. I respect his views. And that is precisely why I felt hurt and let down with his response to the Orissa carnage. He has tried to belittle and play down the violence in Orissa against the Christian community which has been by far the worst in India in living memory without condemning the violence."
Marshall, Please go through the contents of my post once again. I did not call you a professional mourner. The Rudaali part was an analogy, inserted simply to illustrate that those who do not lament loudly enough may have as much if not greater sympathy or empathy for the victims than those who do. It is nice to note that you respect Dr Santosh Helekar's views. Selma too has echoed similar sentiments. I think the pot started brewing because both of you misinterpreted his views and intentions. A polite query would have done the trick but what we saw were a few harsh comments which were uncalled for. For the records, the above lines that you wrote are contrary to the facts and are a perfect example of the misinterpretation that I am talking of. Here is what Santosh wrote earlier on Goanet on the Orissa riots: "Communal riots have plagued India since its inception. The root cause of this madness is the tendency for even educated people to incite hatred against those who are different from them, at the drop of a hat - hatred that in the minds of criminals translates into atrocious action. We have to find an effective way to remove the cause." "I was trying to point out that it is this underlying hatred that is the root cause of all communal riots. I think the best way to get rid of it is to eliminate or trivialize all sources of divisiveness - casteist, religious, regional, social and political." I hope this should clear the air and we do not go on a lengthy drawn-on battle on such flimsy trivial grounds. It is this needless bickering on whimsical grounds that I referred to earlier as childish behavior. Let's focus our energies on targeting those who are actually responsible for the riots, not on people like Santosh who are working overtime to consistently promote rational thoughts and voices of reason in our society. Could we have some sort of a truce please? Cheers Sandeep
