Over the years, every so-called spontaneous attack on free expression has had the support of political groups... Violence is the weapon of choice of all self-styled defenders of faiths and ideas in India. This week’s example comes from Maharashtra, where offices of the Marathi newspaper Lokmat in Akola and Jalgaon were vandalised. The attackers, it seems, were upset by an illustration for an article in the newspaper’s Sunday edition about how the ISIS is funded.
'This is a story I have narrated, but it bears repeating. Not 50 metres from the Hajee Sir Ismail Sait mosque in my east Bangalore neighbourhood of Richards Town is the Lusitania cold storage. You can buy pork chops, ox tongue, roast beef and a variety of other meat products. The homes behind Lusitania are overwhelmingly inhabited by Muslims, with a reasonable scattering of Hindus and Christians. So it is all across Bangalore’s old cantonment areas. Pork shops are close to mosques, restaurants with beef on their menu are next to Hindu homes – and no one has ever cared.
'New Delhi– How a handful of radical Islamists can hold the entire house of liberals to ransom was evident at the launch of Noor Zaheer’s new book, “Denied by Allah—Angst Against Archaic Laws of Halala, Triple Talaq, Muta’h and Khula”... The book was supposed to be released on the last day of this year’s International Book Fair in Delhi. The organisers could not manage the release as a group of Muslims first occupied seats among the audience, then started interrupting the proceedings and finally, went berserk.
"...Viewed in totality, there is little that can distinguish this Hindu Rashtra paradigm from the Islamic Caliphate one. They are both inspired by a misplaced sense of superiority, bitter xenophobic animosity and a justification of means that are not only aggressive but also violent. They are both founded on lies and by whipping a sense of redefined and flawed history. Interestingly, such unjustifiable demands, especially invoked in plural societies, not only run parallel to each other but also complement each other and find a rationale for expansion based on competitive ‘othering’.
