The national news papers are now awash with stories of the past and present of Jihad, depicting the picture of the ‘venomous, truculent Indian Muslim youth’ each carrying an improvised explosive device (IED) within himself, lethal enough to burn the country. It is a fact that a section of the community is attracted by fundamentalist outfits, most of them motivated only by blind faith and a few of them by material ‘offers’. Each and every time a blast occur, the entire Muslim community is put in the dock and they themselves carry a strong sense of guilt as if they too are accomplices in a cold-blooded crime. The media of course plays a vital role in charging a community for crimes executed by some sick minded monomaniacs, by the colored stories, semi-fiction and fiction on SIMI, LeT, HuJI, and of course ISI and the involvement of the youth in the same. It is turned out to be tough to distinguish between a believer and a terrorist. Anybody who grows a beard, does namaz, and follows his religion, is prone to be arrested and detained at any time!
Some times the stories untold serve a purpose more, than the stories told. Covertly, for a couple of weeks the national news papers effectively serve this purpose, deliberately or not. Look at the way media handled the blasts in which Sangh activists have been involved. Let me cite an example. The Indian Express and Mail Today have carried the story of Kanpur blast in which two Bajrang Dal activists were killed. Both of them were killed while they were engaged in bomb making. (The Bajrang Bomb?-IE; Bajrang Dal plotted revenge blasts in Kanpur-MT, 26th /27th Aug.2008) It is also reported that, the police was astonished to see the quantity of bombs found.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 