 |
| Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh (Source: Google) |
Children are orphaned and rendered homeless. Refugees lose
all their belongings and property and have to start from scratch, in terrible
conditions.
Humans are supposed to learn from their mistakes, yet the
same thing happens over and over again.
And, equally inevitable, are the opportunistic politicians
who turn up in the aftermath.
Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh played the role to
perfection on his 58th birthday, lashing out at SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav
for his callous decision to party while the victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots
were dying in the camps.
Although Singh did not accuse Mulayam of inciting the riots,
the implication was obvious.
We don't say it enough, but it is a fact: most riots are
incited by party leaders for political gains.
And the ones that turn up later are simply there to earn
brownie points, and maybe polarise the survivors to their own benefit.
Muck is thrown around until it has covered everyone, so that
you can't distinguish the polariser from the polarisee.
If it was the Britishers who sowed the seeds of communalism
in India, it is our politicians who watered them for their personal gain.
In the mad rush to take advantage of the situation, the
lives of the ordinary - the ones who are killed, injured, put out on the
streets and generally traumatised - are ignored.
And we ordinary Indians seem to fall for it every time.
And remember, this has nothing to do with religion, no
matter what those at the forefront might be saying.
What could be better proof of this than the fact that, as a
girl who might find herself in the middle of a riot-hit area, I'm liable to be
tortured, raped and even murdered without anyone so much as asking me what god
I believe in?
© 2014 Nasreen Ghani
Published in Daily Mail and Mail Today:
