Supporting Sujata Patil

Going through the heading of this post, people might wonder who is this Sujata Patil? And seeing the increasing trend of crime against women across India, some might even think that she is a victim of some crime.

Professionally she is a police inspector with traffic police at Matunga, Mumbai. Though she is not a victim of any gender based crime, she is victim of pseudo-secular mindset of our politicians. Her crime, she had written and published a poem on the Azad Maidan riot which happened on 11 Aug 2012. The riots happened when a group of muslims gathered to protest against killings of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and Assam. These mob without any provocation became violent and within moments stone pelted BEST buses, police vehicles, media OB vans and later torched a few of them. They cornered the police, beat them and even molested the lady police vehicles and tried to rape few of them. They also broke vandalized the Amar Jawan Jyoti, a memorial dedicated to unknown Indian Soldier, who died on the line of duty.

So this lady officer, Sujata Patil wrote a poem and published it in the police magazine ’Samvaad’. The poem is titled as Azad Maidan and conveys the feeling of an agitated and frustrated police officer who was not allowed to act to save the honour of the force. The poetess compares the rioters with snakes, traitors and wants to cut hands of those rioters. The main argument put forward is that the rioters vandalized the Amar Jawan Jyoti. The sentiment expressed was shared by all the Indians and the news paper reports covering the incident also portrayed the same feeling. However some muslims felt that it is against the whole community and they started protesting. The government of Maharashtra also as anticipated immediately acted and issued a written apology. The Mumbai police chief and the author was also asked to tender a written apology. However, after reading the poem, I do not see any derogatory comments against the community as whole. Yes the remarks are made, but they are against the rioters and and hence there was no need to get so sensible. the rioters were Muslims, so they felt agitated. Applying the same logic, they should also feel ashamed of the acts of the talibanis and extremist muslims, but I have never seen such things happening in India. Also, the same community has never been opposing the hate speeches of likes of Owaisi or Zakir Naik. In fact the speeches receive public accolades and hurray. I wonder, where these secular loving people hide themselves then.

I am not a Anti-Muslim, but for me my country comes first, each and every time. Next comes the human rights, which are guaranteed in our constitution, which includes freedom of expression (with reasonable restrictions). And I want to support Sujata, because the right to express is being suppressed and this is happening quite too often, whether it be arresting of two girls on an innocent Facebook post, or arresting a young chap for his twitter accusations. The happenings in this country are wrong and will lead us to a police nation instead of welfare nation.

That’s the reason for supporting the likes of Sujata Patil, Shahin Dhada or Renu Srinivasan. But I am amazed by the reaction of the Indian Media houses who have willfully ignored this braveheart. Anyway that was anticipated.

P. S : Giving the poem of Ms Patil as published in the police magazine Samwaad and its translation in English.

 

The So called so so INDO PAK Bonhomie

The recent killings of Indian soldiers followed by mutilating the dead bodies have created a wave of angst in whole of India. The killings have special significance as they have followed the recent warming up of ties of India and Pakistan which were in frozen shape after the November 2008 Mumbai Attacks.

Glancing through brief history of the two nations since independence in 1947, one will observe that the relation between two neighbours have been not so cordial and there have been wars between them in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Apart from this there have been numerous border skirmishes in Rann of Kutch, Kashmir valley, Siachen and the terrorist activities supported by Pakistan in Kashmir and other parts of India since 1980. There were also brief durations of peace between them which was mostly forced by UN, US and western countries. One peculiar feature of the Indo-Pak relation is that whenever India has strained relations with Pakistan with tension along the borders there is comparatively a larger degree of peace in India (both within and at borders). The moment India decides to pursue some peace talks and confident building measures along the border, there are some misdemeanors from Pakistan either at the borders or inside India territory.

I know the above facts will be difficult to digest for my brethren who believe in peace and vigorously support ‘Aman Ki Asha’, but then there is no harm calling a spade a spade. Let me clarify my point with some examples.

Since operation Meghdoot (1984 for Siachen Glacier), there was relatively calm on the borders and the peace talks were going on the lines of Simla agreement. But taking advantage of the environment of peace and trust, Pakistan started training and inducting terrorists in Kashmir. These terrorist activities have killed more than 1 million people, and displaced lacs of Kashmiri Hindus. The Kashmiri Hindus have fled the valley and are compelled to stay in Refugee camps. Though India responded to the insurgency with increased presence of troops in valley, the evils it created are still to be sorted. The stalemate created in relations grew and a peace was expected only when Indian PM Atalbihari Vajpayee visited Pakistan in 1998. In response, what India got for this noble gesture was the Kargil conflict.

India has backstabbed again and again by Pakistan with Agra summit followed by Attacks on Indian Parliament, bomb blasts in Mumbai Local trains, the cricket diplomacy followed by attack on Mumbai in Nov 2008. Time and again India forwarded its hands for friendship with Pakistan it has received bloodshed and the common Indian had to bore the brunt.

What is the solution to this and how to deal with such a neighbor? If we are bothered by a menacing neighbor in our neighborhood, we generally avoid interacting with them and I personally believe that this is the approach we should have even with Pakistan. We are not going to miss some greatest sporting action if India does not play with Pakistan or if we don’t hear songs of Pakistani Musicians. Statistics show that the terror modules became inactive, whenever there was tension on Indo-Pak border.  In short, let’s dump this Aman ki Asha crap, because we are neither having Aman nor Asha (only nirasha). We will have a safer India and then we can fight with other evils like crime against women, illiteracy, child labour etc.

(This post was penned down on 20 Jan 2013)