All that you said is correct. Muslims need to change their attitude and behaviour etc... It is all correct. I fully support you. But, having said that, do you think what the Gujarat government and the "middle class" did was correct?
Before you fly off into a "pseudo-secular" prejudice, please take time out, think and respond, was what the government and the middle class did, right?
If you were a minority member, muslim, dalit, christian, parsee, how would you have responded to the state's response? I write to you because I feel you thought out your response and thought deep enough to put down your thoughts to words on this forum.
And that is what Yagnik is talking about. And that is what Modi is NOT talking about. My country is beloved to me. And I used to consider my countrymen as one of the bravest in the whole wide world. But the Gujarat state's response to Godhra has shaken my belief in that. As an ostrich that hides its head in the sand, reams and reams is being written about how the reprisal to Muslim appeasement was long overdue and all such matters. These are real issues, no doubt and only some self-serving politician of any hue will deny them. That still is no reason why the state government acted the way it did. In a society there are ways to teach and ways to learn. Pogrom is not one of them. And until Gujarat learns to stand up and say that as a society they failed during those days, no amount of swabhimani rhetoric will erase that guilt. Modi is a fair enough leader, as "leaders" go. Nobody can deny the effectiveness of a leader who is capable of raising investment climate in his/her state. But, it is also undeniable, that while leading the response to the Godhra tragedy, he willy nilly engineered the social ostracisation of his fellow statesmen, caused the murder of a large number of his people, for whom he had constitutional duty to protect. There is no denying the fact that he is a murderer. And as long as the civil society at large do not own to the reality of this charge, there will not be an awakening in Gujarat.
And Viral, Gujarat will progress. But at what cost? How long will you progress by hiding from the reality of the pogrom. Godhra was an incident, calculated or otherwise, depending upon the colour of your vote. But the state response was shameful. And the earlier we own up to that fact, the better for this country.
And certainly better for the whole of India, if muslims learnt to change their attitude and got assimilated into the pluralistic fabric called India. But that topic has been so widely circulated, that it would be a blind muslim who does not see the duality in his/her culture / religion and his life in secular India.
