Wednesday was just another disappointing day for India’s so-called ‘liberal’ journalists and ‘secular intelligentsia’. The Indian judiciary pronounced a judgment which didn’t concur with the eminent intellectuals dotted all over India’s liberal landscape. And what followed was yet another campaign to vilify the Indian State and victimize the Indian Muslim community yet again.
A CBI court pronounced its verdict in the 28-year old Babri demolition case, acquitting 32 accused including some big names like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. The Court held that the demolition wasn’t pre-planned and neither did it involve “anti-social elements”. Surendra Kumar Yadav said, “The accused tried to stop the demolition.”
Evidences that were presented against the accused lacked credibility. Video cassettes and footages of the demolition of the Babri Masjid were neither sealed nor dispatched to forensic laboratories to confirm their veracity. Similarly, newspaper articles weren’t submitted in their original form and photographs were given without negatives, and therefore, the Court went on to acquit the 32 accused persons.
Therefore, political leaders like Advani were being hounded by the leftist intelligentsia for all these years without any evidence. Nevertheless, the CBI Court’s verdict should have meant curtains as far as the Babri issue is concerned. But the liberal media, of course, had different plans. It soon came up with some of the most bizarre reports and arguments in a desperate bid to instill a feeling of victimhood amongst Indian Muslims yet again.
Ever since the 32 accused persons were acquitted, the so-called intellectuals have been trying to make Muslims feel as if they have been wronged by the Indian State and judiciary. Nasty comments are being made in a bid to ensure that the Babri demolition issue doesn’t get buried in the past. The left-liberal lobby is ensuring that ghosts of the past are kept afresh in the Muslim psyche.
The nightmare began as early as 1993 and 2002. If 93 was given justice, 2002 would not have happened. If 2002 was given justice, present day India would have looked different. The Indian media developed a collective amnesia, whitewashed the sins of the great "secular" leaders. https://t.co/1nlYr7edHb
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) October 1, 2020
https://twitter.com/cjwerleman/status/1311537111946780672
Babri Verdict: Has Nightmare Begun for Muslims and India? https://t.co/73ExHyYdHE
— Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) October 1, 2020
Editorials, cartoons, political remarks and tweets- all forms of media are being aggressively used to once again hammer victimhood into the Indian Muslim psyche. It is also victimization in a sense that the liberal media is subjecting the Muslims to a forced victimhood narrative, hurting the prospects of growth for the community as it remains entangled in a victimhood syndrome. Even while the Court has announced its verdict based on the evidence presented before it, the Muslim community is being made to feel that it has been wronged.
This is the larger left-liberal plot of keeping the Muslim victimhood sentiment alive, simply because it suits the left-liberal agenda. Slandering the judicial system and screaming injustice is what the liberals do every single time they feel that they have a chance of exploiting Muslim emotions. Therefore, when the Ayodhya Ramjanambhoomi matter got settled by the Supreme Court, the so-called “intelligentsia” started making all kinds of bizarre insinuations.
It is today clear that the Babri Masjid was constructed after destroying a temple in Ayodhya. Befuddled liberals started claiming that the Ram Temple verdict was erroneous and that it was the Muslims who lost their Mosque and that the Court verdict was politically influenced. The issue of Babri demolition is as old as 28 years, but even the present Muslim generations are being made to feel victimized.
This is how the Indian mainstream media works. They ensure that every Muslim is made to feel like a born victim and suspect the Indian State, even when the government and institutions treat all citizens equally.
Babri is becoming yet another instrument for the liberals to misguide the Muslims. This is what the media has been doing with the 2002 riots while completely skirting around the Godhra train burning case. The so-called liberals ensure that 2002 riots never become a thing of the past. Still more radical liberals tend to make a huge deal out of issues like the Ishrat Jahan case or the Batla House encounter case.
Such is the victimhood narrative that even after the lies of the liberal lobby get called out, they keep on stretching the issue even if they have to slander the judiciary and vilify the entire State.
The end object of such systematic victimization is, of course, to keep the country on the edge by causing social strife which leads to unsavoury events like the Shaheen Bagh protests, because a single community is being made to feel like a targeted minority even while the State has no such prejudice against it.
On the other hand, the same liberals ensure that every anti-Hindu riot is made a non-event– from the Marichjhapi massacre to the 1989 riots against the Kashmiri Pandits. Still, other anti-Hindu massacres like the Noakhali riots or the Moplah riots have been rebranded as rebellions or clashes by the liberal intelligentsia.
Therefore, the dominant liberal and media perceptions are such that Hindus are branded communal if they recollect bitter memories, while the Muslims are not allowed to forget events distant in memory and even present generations are made to feel antagonised for no real reason.
The liberal media doesn’t want the victimhood perception to die. They feel their existence is rooted in building the narrative of a persecuted Muslim minority, even though the Muslim community has prospered in India as the second-largest religious community in the country. The outrage following the Babri demolition verdict is thus yet another manifestation of the liberal media-led constant victimization of Muslims.
