By Badri Raina, ZNet, September 1, 2009
“That you may smile and smile and be a villain”
His great contribution to politics: pulling his party, the BJP, from two to some one hundred and eighty seats in parliament—all on the back of a hate-filled, anti-Muslim pogrom.
His great contribution to “thought”: coining the phrase “pseudo-secularism,”—defined as any activity on behalf of the state to ameliorate the abysmal social and economic situation of India’s Muslims.
This lean and hungry man, unctuous in speech, guilt-ridden finger-tips gingerly touching across his chest, watched over by foxy moustache, affecting gravitas with tentative stoop and bended head within which breed impulses of self-serving small-mindedness—this undeserving man who would be India’s prime minister has finally been found out.
And, like the priest who forged the gun-powder plot (and justified, during his interrogation, equivocation as sanctioned religious practice), he no longer can equivocate either to the nation or to god. Perhaps to himself as well. Although that must be in doubt.
Four members out of five that constituted the Cabinet Committee on Security during the Vajpayee regime in 1999 have made public averment that he was always present in the meetings that deliberated the hijack of the IC-814 by terrorists, and, contrary to his denials, was wholly in the know of and in agreement with the decision to let the then foreign minister accompany three high-value terrorists to Kandhar.
Thus, the Lauh Purush (iron man) has been found to be an abject equivocator merely, and a cowardly one at that.
Tags: Babri Mosque, Badri Raina, BJP, India, Indians, religous festivals
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