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30 November, 2008

Sharing a brilliant editorial piece

The following is part of the editorial in today's (Nov 30) Hindustan Times written by Vir Sanghvi. My friend Mr Nirmalya liked it and he thought that every body would like it too. For the entire editorial, please click here.
We're all Bombayites today "
.......... Not since 1992 have I felt so much public anger and outrage directed at the political class. People do not blame politicians for terrorism. We understand that this is a global phenomenon. We accept also that every attack cannot be anticipated or prevented. But the Bombay attacks are different. Surely, they were not unexpected? After bomb blast after bomb blast and attack after attack, India's politicians must have known that the city was at risk. And yet the authorities reacted to this attack exactly as they had reacted to all the previous ones: with astonishment and ineptitude.How many bombs need to go off, how many innocents need to die before politicians realise that they have been elected to defend the people of India? Consider the US. Nobody blamed George Bush for 9/11. And for all his faults he was able to ensure that there would be no terrorist attack for the next eight years. Or think of England. The country was shocked by the 7/7 bombings. But politicians assured people that there would be no repeat and indeed, there's been nothing since. Think of Indonesia. The Bali bombing has not been followed by any terrorist attack on that scale. .......................I thought the SMSes about Raj Thackeray summed up the mood of India. Thackeray had no role to play in the aftermath of the attacks but the murder and the mayhem put his politicking in context. Bombay was not defended solely by the Marathi manoos. It was defended by Indians who protected other Indians — while this particular Marathi manoos — or perhaps that should be Marathi mouse — cowered at home. The BJP has tried to turn terrorism into a political issue, suggesting indirectly that the government is not acting against terrorists because it is scared of losing the Muslim votes. The Congress has retaliated by pointing out that many of the terrorists are in fact Hindu extremists. But what the public response of the last few days tells us is this: we don't really care. As far as we're concerned, they're all the same. Of course the Congress is culpable for the Bombay attacks. But then, were things very different during the BJP's term when Parliament was attacked?The message from the people of India is that we are fed up of politicians who use terrorism as an excuse to win votes. We are fed up of the way they seek to pit Muslim against Hindu over the dead bodies of victims of terror in the cynical hope of winning the next election. We are fed up of their incompetence. And we are fed up of their tendency to play politics when they should be doing something to protect us. ..............."

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