 |
| image source : indiatvnews.com |
Selective outrage is the flavour of the season. While the united opposition engages in political tourism to score brownie points with regard to a brutal incident in one part of the country, a series of terror attacks in another part of the country do not garner even the slightest indignation from the same anti-Modi political class.
The Congress leadership duo of the Gandhi siblings successfully managed to derive great political mileage from the shocking Lakhimpur Kheri episode in which a speeding car belonging to union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra mowed down a group of protesting farmers and it was alleged that his son Ashish Misra was in the car. Eight people, including four farmers and two BJP workers, died in the incident and the violence that followed it.
On display was high-voltage optics courtesy of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and her team, who appeared in the Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh, a key state that goes to polls in a few months, solely to capitalise on the tumultuous situation that transpired in the aftermath of the killings. To avoid further vitiation of the already tense atmosphere in the region, the law enforcement authorities in UP had no choice but to detain the protesting leaders who preposterously accused the Centre and the Yogi Adityanath government of trying to shield the minister’s son.
image source : telanganatoday.com
But nothing could be further from the truth as an investigation into the horrific event went underway right from the get-go and the Yogi administration showed absolutely no lack of alacrity or provided any form of undue insulation from the law to the accused to derail the process of delivery of justice. On the contrary, the accused Ashish Mishra was summoned, grilled and arrested by the UP police in less than a week after the Lakhimpur violence took place and continues to remain in custody ever since with the UP Special Investigation Team (SIT) now probing the case. Safe to say, therefore, that the law is taking its course to bring the perpetrator(s) of the crime to book.
The flip side
The hypocrisy of the Congress-led opposition becomes blatantly evident when their scripted hue and cry against Lakhimpur violence is juxtaposed with their apathy towards the targeted killings of Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir.
For the Kashmiri Pandit (KP) community, the ghosts of Islamic terror that were unleashed on the KPs in Kashmir in the 90s returned to haunt them in a massive when 68-year-old Makhan Lal Bindroo, a prominent Pandit pharmacist, was shot dead by terrorists inside his pharmacy in Srinagar on October 5. ML Bindroo, who consciously chose to stay back in Kashmir after the onset of terrorism in the early 90s aimed at wiping out the Kashmiri Pandit minority from the valley, after these years paid the ultimate price for being a Hindu who was living peacefully and honourably in his homeland.
image source : indiaaheadnews.com
Two other civilians, a Hindu street vendor from Bihar and a Muslim cab driver, were also gunned down by terrorists on the same day barely hours after Bindroo’s cold-blooded murder. If this was not enough - Satinder Kour, a Sikh principal at a government school in the Eidgah area of downtown Srinagar, and Deepak Chand, a Hindu teacher at the same school, were shot dead on October 7 by terrorists of The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy terror group of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. They were killed for daring to involve students in the Independence Day celebrations of the school this year.
Such irreversible damage was inflicted on the minorities in Kashmir within one week but the united opposition did not find it worthy of the same degree of condemnation and clamour, albeit fake, as they displayed in the case of Lakhimpur. Instead, the Congress party’s veteran leader from J&K, Saifuddin Soz, had the audacity to suggest that PM Modi must hold talks with those in the valley who only speak the language of the gun.
However, the fact that the opportunist opposition led by the Congress along with the Samajwadi Party in UP, among others, have politicised the Lakhimpur happening to their advantage comes as no surprise at all given the high stakes that are involved in the state from an election standpoint.
The solitary agenda of the Gandhi-Vadra Congress and other opposition parties in UP quite clearly is to somehow rock the BJP’s boat in the run-up to the assembly polls and present themselves as a viable alternative to the current Yogi administration. As conspicuous as it gets, everything else is merely a facade. Why were these so-called custodians of humanity silent when sadhus were lynched by a vigilante mob in Palghar in April 2020 or when the Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma was stabbed 51 times to death in the February 2020 Delhi riots?
image source : indianexpress.com
The fact of the matter is that the anti-Modi political brigade stands exposed whenever it ventures to politicise a mishap or a criminal activity in a BJP ruled state, Lakhimpur Kheri in this instance, or maintaining a stoic silence when religious minorities are targeted and killed in Kashmir by terrorists.
The bigger picture
Amid all the absurd politicking by the Congress-led opposition, one cannot afford to lose sight of the bigger picture that depicts the constant security threat that looms over the civilian minorities in Kashmir. Such a precarious scenario is detrimental to the embodiment of Naya Jammu and Kashmir, which the Modi government envisaged after the revocation of Article 370 in August 2019.
Reports of KP government employees, who work in the valley under a rehabilitation package, fleeing Kashmir fearing for their life following the targeted killings is reminiscent of the 90s. Attacking civilian minorities is an escalation from the prevailing pattern wherein several BJP workers and nationalists in Kashmir have been eliminated by terrorists in recent months. This is a dangerously growing trend, to say the least.
image source : menafn.com
It puts the onus, therefore, on the Modi government more strongly than ever to revisit its security blueprint for Kashmiri minorities and pro-India voices living and working in Kashmir. The last thing the idea of a unified India wants is for the dream of a peaceful and stable Naya Jammu and Kashmir to get sabotaged due to Pakistan sponsored terror in J&K. For this dream to remain safe and ultimately translate into reality, the security of Kashmiri Pandits, other minorities and nationalists based in the valley holds paramount importance.
No comments:
Post a Comment