Bharat Ratna for one and jail for another!

BY V.SUNDARAM

The Cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed first appeared in a Danish News Paper in Copenhagen in Denmark in 2005 and caused violent mass demonstrations in many parts of the Muslim world and also in India.

In many parts of Northern India, especially Lucknow and in Hyderabad in South India, Muslim Demonstrators went on a rampage and let loose unprovoked violence against the local innocent Hindu civilian population, resulting in large scale destruction of property and loss of several lives. Particularly in Lucknow and Hyderabad, Islamic anti-social elements had a field day because they were able to get the tacit political patronage (If not open official Police support on paper!) of Mulayam Singh Yadav {The greatest non-Muslim Champion of Islam in World History!} in Lucknow and Dr Rajasekhara Reddy (The greatest Field Marshal of Sonia’s Evangelical Anti-Hindu Brigade in South India!).

The 12 cartoons portraying the founder of Islam, including one showing the prophet with a bomb in his turban, outraged Muslims who saw them as blasphemous. These Cartoons originally appeared in a Danish News Paper in 2005. Later some News Papers in France, Belgium and Belarus reproduced these Cartoons leading to protest in those countries.

Now we have got the news from Belarus. A Criminal Court in that country has passed an order on 18th January 2008 (Friday) jailing for three years an Editor of an independent newspaper who reproduced cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in Denmark in 2005 and caused widespread demonstrations across the Muslim world. Belarussian authorities shut down the ‘Zgoda’ (Consensus) paper in March 2006, around the time when other European journals began reprinting the cartoons. The security service, still known by its Soviet-era name, the KGB, began an investigation after Muslims in that ex-Soviet State complained. Thus the Law in Belarus has finally caught up with the man who reproduced the controversial cartoons in question in that country.

There is no Rule of Law in India. We are condemned to have only the Rule of Men – Rule of Unscrupulous Politicians on the one hand and Rule of Mafia Men from the world of electronic and print media on the other. I am saying this because M.F. Hussain, who is known for his slandering of Hinduism through his barbarously nude paintings of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, is being proposed by the electronic and print media in India for the highest civilian award of Bharat Ratna. When our ‘distinguished’ President was initially nominated for that post, I had written a serious of articles in these columns under the title ‘Why should we have a President with criminal antecedents?’ Even before her Election as President, I had watched several programmes on the mainline T.V. Channels like ND TV, CNN IBM and in all those programmes, many of the participants had extolled the unsurpassed and unmatched qualifications of our distinguished President. In the same way, yesterday I saw a programme on ND TV Channel. It was on the issue of what I call ‘Public Auction of Bharat Ratna through Mass Media’. Some selected men from the media and some politicians like Jaya Jaitley and Abhishek Singhvi and others participated in the debate on ‘Who is the most eligible candidate for Bharat Ratna?’ Some of the participants proposed the name of M F Hussain for the award of Bharat Ratna. M.F. Hussain’s name has been proposed despite the fact that he is now a criminal absconder living in the middle-east and is facing many criminal charges in several Courts of Law in different parts of India. In Belarus, a man is jailed for three years in 2008 for hurting the religious feelings of Muslims in that country just by republishing some Cartoons on Prophet Mohamed which had appeared originally in a Danish News Paper in 2005. In India, a man like M F Hussain who should be arrested and punished forthwith under several sections of the Indian Penal Code for having deliberately hurt the religious feelings and sentiments of more than 800 millions of Hindus in India in majority and many more millions of Hindus outside India, is being sponsored indirectly through our electronic media and print media in a shameless manner for the award of Bharat Ratna. It is this cruel dichotomy which has inspired the title of my column today ‘Bharat Ratna for One and the Jailfor the Other’.

In a few News Papers during the last three days I have read reports relating to ‘some unknown Hindu groups’ attacking the Offices of ND TV first in Ahmedabad and then in Bhopal. I can give first hand evidence in any Court of Law about the disgraceful and reprehensible manner in which ND TV has been conducting no holds barred ‘Direct Personal Attack Programmes’ on Narendra Modi during the last five years. And the known fact is that no one in Gujarat ever attempted to attack the Offices of ND TV in Ahmedabad during the last five years. Parallely we also have the established fact that only one person died on account of Islamic Terrorism in Gujarat from 2002 to 2007. Some distinguished journalists like Karan Thapar have written about the need for a sudden termination of the Rule of Narendra Modi in Gujarat even after his spectacular victory in the recently held elections in December 2007. Then many in the media after being made to kiss the dust after Modi’s victory, have chosen to attack the common people of Gujarat for having asserted their democratic right to choose Narendra Modi – and Narendra Modi alone – as their beloved Chief Minister. People of Gujarat do not require the unsought services of ‘creative interlopers’ from the world of pseudo-secular media to rig the elections in a post- facto manner after the declaration of results, not by the Pakistan Election Commission but the by the (Sonia-Loaded!) India’s Election Commission.

As a former Civil Servant with rich experience in the field of public investigation of controversial issues in several spheres, I have carefully analysed the so called ‘attack’ on NDTV Offices in Ahmedabad and Bhopal—both BJP ruled States. I can very clearly see that the great hunger for wielding unlimited power has become an elemental craving and passion amongst the men and women in the pseudo-secular mass media in India. In this context I am only reminded of a character called Edward Armstead in Irving Wallace’s famous novel ‘The Almighty’ who heads a vast ‘News Empire’

When the hunger for power becomes a craving—a ruling obsession—it is not enough for a man like Edward Armstead to head a vast news empire. First he will want to shape the news – then manipulate and control it – and finally he will want to create it. His motto is ‘BRAZENLY CREATE THE NEWS IN ORDER TO BREAK THE NEWS’

In Irvin Wallace’s ‘The Almighty,’ Edward Armstead, is so obsessed with power that he orchestrates front-page news events, even at the risk of global destruction. Only one person can stop Armstead from completing his plans to arrange for the deaths of the Pope, the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the United States. That person is Victoria Weston, a reporter on Armstead’s own New York City daily. We cannot dismiss this as pure fiction. No one can dispute that it realistically and graphically exposes the national dangers of the role, the nature and the capabilities of modern journalism in India—both electronic and print media — as practiced daily by a select coterie of grandiloquently anti-national and anti-Hindu pseudo-secular megalomaniacs in our midst.

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