Rana Ayyub

In 2008, the Islamist terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out a dozen coordinated attacks in Mumbai which claimed 175 lives, leaving over 300 injured, their lives changed forever. Our intellectuals, including politicians and filmmakers, sold these attacks as an execution by the Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamseva Sang (RSS). One of the terrorists, Kasab, was planted in the scene as a Hindu, wearing a sacred thread, the Kalava, on his wrist; his arrest foiled the well-scripted plan of smearing the Hindus.

In 2015, the terrifying Kandhamal gang rape case sent tremors across West Bengal, shaking up the whole nation. A 71-year-old Syro-Malankara Catholic nun was brutally raped by unidentified men who had broken into the Ranaghat convent school, robbed the Catholic Missionary School and didn’t leave before putting the septuagenarian through unspeakable barbarity. Reactions came pouring in from all directions, and the media was livid. Islamist journalists posing as secularists were quick to blame Hindu groups. It was providential for them, as the “Hindutva party” under the leadership of Narendra Modi had just assumed power at the centre. Very deftly, they tried to brush off the fact that “law and order” was a state subject, and the state of West Bengal was being governed by the Muslim-pandering Trinamool Congress with Mamata Banerjee at the helm.

Taunting the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, famous journalist-cum-activist Rana Ayyub bloviated in a widely read and shared article: “No, Mohan Bhagwat these terrorists have not infiltrated from neighbouring Bangladesh. They are our very own demons indoctrinated by the hate for the haraamzadas.” Her insinuation was that this heinous crime was committed by the “Christian-hating Hindus.”

As investigations progressed, contrary to the popular journalist’s claims, six Bangladeshi infiltrators, including Nazrul Islam, Ohidul Islam, Selim Sheikh and Khaledar Rahman were arrested, prosecuted and found guilty of this crime. It took about two years for the case to conclude, and in those two years, people had lost interest and had moved on to new cases. The damage, however, had been done by Rana Ayyub, who had successfully promulgated the deceiving narrative of the Hindus, triggered by their hatred for the Christians, executing this hate crime. Their moral fibre is so frayed that they do not feel the need to tender an apology for their irresponsible commentary on a section of society.

Ayyub, a regular blogger with a famous American media house, is celebrated for her anti-Modi pieces, and infamous for her dubious pieces of fiction back home. Her famed book, Gujarat Files, which was predicated on the 2002 Gujarat riots that ensued after a Muslim mob torched the Sabarmati express, killing over 50 Hindu pilgrims, was successful in advancing the smear campaign against Narendra Modi. The book was later trashed by the Supreme Court of India for being “based upon surmises, conjectures, and suppositions”; the Court added that the book had “no evidentiary value.”

Rana Ayyub is not alone in this. In India, there is an entire ecosystem that functions in perfect lockstep to destabilize the status quo and create a pro-Islamist environment. They do it by tarnishing the image of India globally, projecting the claim that Muslims are being victimized and that Hindutva-gangs are pure evil. They cry, loudly and without civility, that they are being victimized, without caring that in most cases their claims of victimhood are flawed and factually incorrect. Their cries are loud enough for the world media to broadcast their “plight.”

A smart way of abusing the Hindu demography and going unreprimanded is to use the word “Hindutva” instead of “Hindu,”  a trick these “intellectuals” employ craftily. An example of this was when the popular media figure Saba Naqvi tweeted last year, “Yatras by Hindutva groups should never have been allowed…”

But again, engendered by the inaction of the administration, members of this intelligentsia often slander the Hindus openly and face no consequences for their open and obvious hate. Bollywood scriptwriter Hussain Haidry tweeted “Hindu terrorists, Hindu terrorists, Hindu terrorists” last year. Twitter found nothing objectionable there. Recently, an activist of sorts, Sharjeel Usmani, tweeted, “A Hindu chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is most likely a terrorist.” Twitter, again, found nothing going against its “community standards” there. However, despite countless riots, bombings, murders following a particular slogan, the slogan and the ones chanting it remain unassailable globally. A police complaint was lodged against Usmani, but nothing much would come of it, as India loves to handle its minorities with kid gloves. And that’s why pretentious journalists get the liberty to chant “Pakistan Zindabad”(Long live Pakistan) while complaining and cribbing that “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Victory to Mother India) is communal and hence unacceptable.

These intellectual Islamists have made inroads into every area of modern life that shapes minds and influences thinking. Every aspect of Indian life that was once simply a part of Indian culture is now a political tool. They have taken over Bollywood. Knowing that Indians love their movies and adulate their movie stars, one can only imagine the extent of brainwashing that happens from that one domain. Further, barring a few platforms, the mainstream media – electronic, print, and digital — has long since slipped into their power. They entertain as radio jockeys and very smoothly ingrain their agenda into impressionable minds. They are ruling the marketing world as well, and so you see advertisements highlighting how a Hindu woman is lovingly accepted by a Muslim family, while Hindu children terrorize a Muslim youth on the Hindu festival of Holi. Muslim movie stars whose non-Hindu wives had converted to Islam “consensually” after marriage have the audacity to talk about the growing intolerance in the country. Unfortunately, people trust their version of the story also. India has already once been dismembered to make room for an Islamic nation.