Shiban Khaibri
The moral duty of any writer, any columnist would be to raise his or her voice against anything that was aiming at weakening the country and undermining the nation and any silence or penning of only selective events with views guarded and loaded with preconceived notions or influenced by personal ideologies, would in fact tantamount to stifling the truth and breaching the principle of equity. That explains, as a brief prelude to the lines that follow herein, with an endeavour to highlight the need to set things right before they slipped out of control and ultimately proved deleterious for our national interests, sovereignty and security of our country and wouldn’t be rectified without a cost involved, if we woke up late. The question would again be that can we, as a nation, afford to pay any further cost simply because of our political (mis)calculations in building vote castles and thus increasing recklessness in asserting to stem the rot. Don’t you smell, though yet faintly, the rot creeping in our political system which had potentialities to wreck havoc with the social equilibrium and national security, watched and perhaps encouraged by two of our belligerent neighbours; about the one, less said the better.
Have we reached a suicidal point in our political equations and poll arithmetic whereby even riots are shielded for votes, and riots which were neither spontaneous nor out of some political group clashes nor out of any other non planned reason ? Has political appeasement over stood its age and turned its full circle now and gone as much worse so as to be in a position to trying to find out entry points to work up for an agenda extraneous to the purpose and aim behind constitutional guarantee of right to protest ? What role have hockey sticks, swords, petrol bombs, sticks, bricks, kerosene containers and match boxes got to do to stage a (peaceful) protest as we saw a few days back in Kaliachak – Malda, West Bengal? The scars of the unprecedented violence there cannot be sidelined , if not totally brushed aside, simply because only a few dozen vehicles were torched, motor bikes and police vehicles burnt after many turning turtle, only two places of worship ransacked, selective shops looted, police station attacked and all vital records there meticulously burnt down which contained vital documents, charge sheets, evidences etc against criminals involved in fake currency rackets, opium, poppy and other narcotic drugs trafficking, trans border crimes and other anti national activities. It was nearly a week after media highlighted this sordid picture of complete lawlessness with apparent overtures in West Bengal that the CM, Mamta Banerjee was compelled to react only to trivialize the whole affair as “a fight between the locals and the BSF”. “It was not a communal trouble”, said Mamta Ji. How could it have been a communal trouble when it was totally one sided — unexpected, unimagined and unexplained when apparently after proper planning, a huge unruly mob of nearly 1.25 lac Muslims virtually had a field day for full five hours when the eye witnesses described the size as “never seen before or being in a position to count” and the Hindu minority there was left to fend for itself and were holed up in their dwellings fearing for their lives. The questions asked are as to who triggered this flare-up? When the organization which mobilized this huge gathering was given permission by the Police , how is it that no police force, fire tenders , medical emergency vans etc accompanied this gathering of over one lac people to be in readiness to meet any emergency? Was no intelligence inputs gathered in connection with this massive gathering to preempt any subversive moves and was therefore the minority Hindus left to their fate? Why, like this, the state administration watched as if it was a part or an ally of the rampaging goons to the extent of not ordering a lathi charge even, let alone firing a shot? Why was, for vote Bank politics, national security made quite a dwarfing entity? If Mamta Baneerji was highly critical of the Left rule of 34 years on criminalization of politics and other short comings, what change has occurred under her leadership? If the Left had financially and socially ruined west Bengal and law and order was no better as was made against them by her and because of which she stormed to power in 2011, why have, under tremendous media post event coverage , just 10 people only out of more than a lac rampaging ones, taken into custody ? What role did the JD(U) MP Gulam Rasool Balyawi play in mobilizing, inciting, pamphlet (ting) and motivating the huge crowd in Malda indulge in mass violence? People say that his organization “Idaar -e- Shariya” had arranged such a huge crowd and why has that man not been arrested so far from Bihar through Mamta’s close ally, the RJD _ JDu dispensation there? If political hand in the riots is confirmed, why is no action taken so far? Why have the DM, the SP and other responsible officers not proceeded against for their complete failure to maintain law and order? The biggest and the most sensitive question is as to why is the secular brigade silent on Malda and not raising its voice like it did in Dadri? Where is the anti (so called) Intolerance brigade on this extreme provocation and brazen intolerance? Where is the concerned cine fraternities who were “scared” of the emergence of intolerance in the country or are they interested only in IPL matches and the auction exercise of cricket players for such matches only and only to make huge fortunes?
The lobby of liberals, “open kind hearts”, self styled intrinsically democratic souls, and those claiming to be highly secular who made Yaqub Memon a “symbol of persecution” and those who keep knocking at the doors of the judiciary at midnight even to try to impart “justice” to such criminals, are conspicuous with their stoic silence on Malda? Kejriwal, who lost no moment to rush to Dadri, had no time just to visit the sufferers in Malda even though he was in Kolkata as an ally invitee by Mamta to watch and enjoy Pakistani Gazal singer Gulam Ali. It was shocking to watch Mamta relaxingly enjoying Ali’s Gazals in chaste Urdu even though she must have worked hard to reach to the depth of the Urdu Gazals but vividly sending enough signs to reach her calculated points and targets since Assembly polls are only a few months away. Arranging Gazal bonanza at a time when only a few days ago, the country lost its seven brave hearts fighting and saving our defence assets in Pathankot air base from terrorists dispatched from Pakistan, is ill conceived . It was evident from her participating in the Gazal concert to send the word out that nothing worrying had in fact happened in her state in Kaliachak Malda . The fact of the matter, on the contrary is, that the embers and the scars of the calculated violence vividly point out that it was all aimed at two targets- the police stations to destroy evidences and other vital documents to save criminals from prosecution involved in fake currency racket, trans border smuggling of arms, cattle, human trafficking, narcotics and drugs trade , anti national and fanatic elements and second, against the minority Hindus to create fear and scare in them. They succeeded in both and the administration failed in both. But why, is what is needed to be unraveled for which Mamta Banerjee is in no mood.
We cannot allow sensitive places and areas especially border areas to be taken care of very casually and recklessly and worst, allow appeasement and pampering to go to an extent, the effects of which could be seen in Kaliachek. Illegally settled Bangladeshi nationals bordering West Bengal, Assam, Tripura etc are otherwise creating havoc in these North Eastern states and their detection and deportation are made political and electoral issues for votes. It is reported that a large number of minority Hindus were so scared that they left their homes to take shelter elsewhere with their relatives and are not daring to return. None is allaying their apprehensions and fears. Bangladesh is bordering Malda and it is not for the first time that anti social and fundamentalist elements are creating lawlessness with specified agenda and keeping that in view , Mamta government should have, in the first place, not granted permission to over a lac to congregate and secondly ensured that no untoward incident took place. If such an undesirable approach towards incidents like Kaliachek Malda is not drastically firmly changed, the likes of what happened in Kashmir in 1989-90 are feared to be repeated at many places like Malda. Please accord top most priority to national integrity rather than to mere votes .
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