Was AR Antulay on payroll of Dawood Ibrahim ?

Pandering to morbid Muslim mindset
By Shyam Khosla

It is for Union Minister for Minority Affairs AR Antulay to clarify whether he was involved in this hate campaign or was he so influenced by the canards spread by Awami Bharat that he saw a “broader conspiracy” behind Hemant Karakare’s killing and demanded an independent enquiry into the circumstances leading to his death.

11 Muslim outfits formed a Coordination Committee of Indian Muslims against the “harassment of Muslims”. Since when killing terrorists has become an harassment of Muslims? The Committee launched a frontal attack on the police for its handling of Jamia encounter and announced a mosque-driven countrywide campaign against the Government.

The ‘secular-liberal’ brigade seems to have lost all sense of national security and social harmony in its mindless pandering to morbid Muslim mindset. A case in point is the hysterical email campaign across the country launched by Awami Bharat— a left-leaning outfit—within hours of the 26/11 that talked of RSS ‘complicity’ in the terror attack on Mumbai. The mail that stunned right thinking citizens said that in the outfit’s analysis the attack had been planned and orchestrated by the Sangh Parivar and its supporters within the security apparatus to counter the investigation by ATS into Malegaon bomb blast.

These patently false and pernicious text messages were forwarded to countless citizens to spread the canard all over the country and abroad. It so gladdened the hearts of self-styled liberals and jehadi supporters that they added their own hate-filled comments to the mail. The blatantly false conjecture also brought a slew of responses from people who condemned the Awami Bharat for its malicious attempt to divert attention from the real perpetrator of the crime— jehadis based in Pakistan. Some of them, said the outfit, had lost whatever credibility it had because it sounded like the “Indian wing of Al-Queda”.

However, Awami Bharat persisted with its malicious campaign. The next round of its text messages said terrorist who entered Kama hospital were heard talking in Marathi to certain persons hiding there and that these Marathi speaking persons (read RSS activists) were responsible for killing Hemant Karkare. A sober response to this hysterical mail from a level-headed journalist read, “Please remember Marathi need not be spoken only by Hindus”.

It is for Union Minister for Minority Affairs, A.R. Antulay, to clarify whether he was involved in this hate campaign or was he so influenced by the canards spread by Awami Bharat that he saw a “broader conspiracy” behind Hemant Karakare’s killing and demanded an independent enquiry into the circumstances leading to his death? The Minister raised ridiculous questions like who asked Karkare to proceed to Kama Hospital instead of the Taj or Oberio conveniently forgetting that it was the ATS chief who was issuing orders and not the one receiving. Further, the hotels came under attack after the ATS chief had left his home for CTS where he was told that terrorists had gone towards the hospital. The Minister’s mischievous statement and subsequent admission that he was satisfied by the Home Minister’s detailed account of the happenings suggest that his antics were part of the vote bank politics. He is neither clean nor secular. The late Prime Minister VP Singh had in a Parliamentary debate dubbed Antulay as the “cement” man of Indian politics—an illusion to the disgraced Maharashtra Chief Minister’s involvement in the fraud pertaining to the allotment of large quantities of cement to those who had donated huge sums to his private trusts. That the Muslim community should accept as its messiah this man who had to quit as Chief Minister because of exposure of his corrupt practices is a measure of the community’s unhealthy mindset. It is not surprising that the first to call on the communal Minister to congratulate him for “saying the unspeakable” was none else than party hopper Syed Shabuddin, formerly of the IFS, who recently jumped over from the Congress to the JD(U).

Yet another manifestation of the negative Muslim mindset is that 90 per cent of the respondents – most of them presumably Muslims – agreed to Antulay’s allegation of a “broader conspiracy” behind ATS chief’s death in a poll conducted by Siasat, a leading Hyderabad-based Urdu newspaper. The respondents must have read reports that ATS chief and his colleagues were gunned down by terrorist in full public view and that the said terrorist was later over-powered by policemen and had confessed of having killed the three police officers. It is disgusting to note that not only ordinary Muslims but also most opinion leaders of the community and Urdu media raised similar questions. BJP’s demand to sack the Minister who had acutely embarrassed the Government and the country was stonewalled by the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi precisely because they didn’t want to annoy the Muslim community.

Similar questions were also raised about the genuineness of the shoot out in the Batla House in Delhi. Blatant lies that Atif alias Bashir and other suspected terrorists were dumped there the previous night to stage a “fake encounter” and that the firing was only one sided were floated in the face of the stark reality that one of the valiant Delhi police officer, MC Sharma, lost his life in the encounter. No sane person can believe that Sharma committed suicide to “tarnish” the image of the Muslim community. While the Samajwadi Party launched an agitation in the issue, Vice Chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia offered public funds to defend the suspected terrorists on the premise that they were students of the University. He relented only after public outcry against his pro-terrorist stance and persistent demands for his resignation. As if that was not enough, 11 Muslim outfits formed a Coordination Committee of Indian Muslims against the “harassment of Muslims”. Since when killing terrorists has become an harassment of Muslims? The Committee launched a frontal attack on the police for its handling of Jamia encounter and announced a mosque-driven countrywide campaign against the Government. In a spirited defence of members of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and SIMI activists arrested for their involvement in Ahmedabad and Delhi serial blasts, the Committee demanded a judicial probe into the “fake encounter” and death of Inspector M C Sharma. A hurriedly compiled “fact-finding” report produced by a team of journalists and academicians (belonging to the “secular-liberal” brigade) that raised doubts about the genuineness of the encounter came handy for the Muslim community’s campaign of vilification against the police to save the IM and SIMI activists involved in heinous crimes.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh and Union MoS for Home Shakeel Ahmed, publicly supported the pro-terrorist line of the Coordination Committee saying there was nothing wrong in asking for an independent enquiry into the incident particularly because of certain doubts in the minds of the minority community. Countless Muslim outfits took to the street condemning what they alleged was a “fake encounter”. Police investigation later brought to light the fact that Atif, who along with another terrorist was killed in the encounter, was the one who had meticulously planned serial bomb blasts in Delhi and Ahmedabad and was an activist of the Indian Mujahadeen and SIMI. These startling revelations came as a set-back to this motivated campaign but no one—neither Digvijay Singh nor Amar Singh nor Shakeel Ahmed—apologised for insulting the sacrifice of MC Sharma and putting hurdles in the police investigations into the terrorist attacks in the national capital.

Antics by Antulay, Shakeel Ahmed and Digvijay Singh can’t be dismissed as individual aberrations, as the ruling party would like us to believe. There is credible circumstantial evidence to show that these were calculated moves orchestrated by the party in pursuance of its vote bank politics. The fact that the party didn’t take any action against these gentlemen, two of whom are Cabinet Ministers and one is a general secretary, though it feigned it was embarrassed by their “unfortunate utterances”, has sent across the message that they did what they did – though in their own curious ways – under the directions or at least approval of the high command (read 10, Janpath). Contrast it with the alacrity with which poor Margret Alva, who was perceived to be close to Sonia Gandhi, was forced to resign and marganlised for her well founded charge that party tickets were sold in Karnataka.