On Monday 10 Dec 2007 3:06 pm, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > Nothing short of public apathy - and > a latent hatred of muslims - would have made conditions ripe for someone > like Modi.
It is public ignorance rather than public apathy Do you know that it is easily possible to justify the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat if you just get your arguments right? I believe this is exactly what India is setting itself up for by failing to understand that group punishment by one entity cannot be criticized while condoning and overlooking group punishment by another entity. Unfortunately, politics favors criticism of the right wing as a group rather than cracking down on the idea group punishment and group guilt. Every act of Islamist terrorism is openly touted as punishment of a group for a previous wrong on Muslims as a group. Political parties and commentators frequently overlook this fact for their own ends, and that actually opens the door wider for group punishment of Muslims by Hindu groups. Check the photo I took of a poster in Bangalore that clearly links group punishment in the form of bomb blasts to persecution of Muslims http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/cybersurg/brf/muslim-riot-blast.jpg All it takes is a Modi to call for retaliation, justifying the random killing of Muslims as retaliation for random bomb blasts (or some other trigger). Tit for tat. In India we don't seem to recognize that group blame and group guilt are concepts that are not constitutionally valid and need to be condemned whoever does them. But we have not even reached a stage of being able to recognize when an entire group is being blamed or implicated. Innocent citizens of Mumbai were punished in retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in a tit for tat retribution. A thousand Innocent Muslims were murdered in Gujarat in an ostensibly tit for tat retribution for the burning of Hindu pilgrims in a railway coach. If the the entire "right wing" are blamed for the latter, how is it wrong for the right wing to blame all Muslims for the former? Tit for tat group blame and group punishment after all. If you can blame the entire right wing, you need to blame all Muslims, in order to be fair. When will educated Indians start seeing the contraditions that we live with? Like I said, it is ignorance. Not apathy. shiv
