Fundamentalism in India: License to rape and kill people?

Deccan Herald 

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Parallel streams of anger: One for every taste

M J Akbar

Who gave any fundamentalist the right to rape and kill innocent people?

Dr Manmohan Singh said, on his return from France, that incidents in Orissa had shamed India before the world. That is important, but far less important than the fact that the violence in Orissa has shamed Indians in India. I measure what Indians do, not by the standards of France, but by the values of modern India, which strengthened the spirit of our freedom movement against western colonialism and were enshrined in that noble document called the Constitution of India. The Bajrang Dal has shamed India before Indians. Nicolas Sarkozy lives by French values, which is perfectly reasonable, for he is a Frenchman. But I am a little underwhelmed by the selective secularism of France, which permits schoolchildren to wear a small cross but will not allow a Sikh child to wear a turban or a Muslim to wear a hijab. One can’t complain: if those are the values of the French, they are entitled to them. If Sarkozy wants to hand out medals to Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen (now given safe custody in India by Dr Manmohan Singh) that is his privilege. No one has accused Taslima of being a claimant to the Nobel Prize for Literature, but Sarkozy is entitled to the nuances of his critical faculties.  more Singhal justifies violence against Christians Ayodhya, Oct 05: VHP president Ashok Singhal on Sunday justified the violence against Christians in Orissa and threatened there will be more attacks in the state. "What Hindu organisations including VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS are doing in Orissa is all legal and is the reaction of the murder of VHP leader Laxmananand Saraswati who was like Jesus Christ to us", he said. Singhal was addressing a hurriedly called press conference in Karsewak Puram, the VHP headquarters in Ayodhya. Read Zee News Bureau Report