The Story of Duryodhana Repeated?

In Mahabharata, inspite of committing many unrighteous acts, when Bhima kills Duryodhana by breaking the rules of the duel then Duryodhana suddenly remembers all the laws of righteousness. This is the characteristic of an adharmic person!

The Media which was so long occupying a moral high-ground (which it never originally had)...the Barkha Dutts, Vir Singhvis with their holier-than-thou attitude, who use to conduct their own trail and implicate people even before courts have their final say (Remember Kanchi Swami, Sadhvi, Modi, Indreshji), are today caught in their own trap. The hunters are being now hunted (or haunted?)

Engulfed in the whole series of accusations and the resulting loss of credence, they are crying shrill and suddenly preaching something: WE SHOULD VERIFY THE FULL EVIDENCE BEFORE IMPLICATING SOMEONE AND SHOULD NOT INDULGE IN "CHARACTER ASSASINATION".
Ahem, is it not clear who are the Duryodhanas of our times? Needless to say, they inherit all his qualities as well - arrogance, greed, unrighteousness!

The God of Great Hyperboles!

Once again, Arundhati Roy's heart bleeds for the Kashmir issue and she pours out her feelings in a strongly worded statement. My advice to the readers before they read the statement:

1. As usual, its an outburst of feelings, you may try to find logic, reason in any those statements at your own risk!
2. The statement may not have anything to do with actual facts as she is very fond of using total hyperboles especially during such moments of intense media limelight!
3. Inspite of 1 and 2, you're still supposed to take all the conclusions seriously! because she is an "eminent" activist.

A small incident which happened during the 2002 Godhra and Gujarat riots, to prove the points made above (reproduced from the Editor's Guild Report of Hindu Viveka Kendra): 

 

In her article "Democracy: Who's She When She's at Home?", Arundhati Roy begins with the following: "Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved "OM" on her forehead."  And then she asks: "Precisely which Hindu scripture preaches this?" (Outlook, May 6, 2002)

Fine words indeed.  Also very moving.  But what is the truth in this incident?  Balbir Punj, a journalist and presently a Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP, wanted to find it out.  In his article "Dissimulation in Words", he writes:  "Shocked by this despicable "incident", I got in touch with the Gujarat government. The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy's help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons. Why is she hedging behind technical excuses?" (Outlook, July 8, 2002)

Punj further writes: "But this sort of sophism is not new for Gujarat. The people decrying Gujarat as a "fascist state in the making" are the ones who spun stories about alleged attacks on Christians in Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra."

In the subsequent issue of Outlook (July 15, 2002) Roy has responded to Punj's article in her usual flippant manner.  However, all that she needed to do was give the name and address of the friend in Vadodara who was weeping on the phone for fifteen minutes, and also the full name of the victim identified by only the first name as Sayeeda, as well as the address.  There the matter would have rested as far as Roy was concerned.

In the May 6 essay, Roy reports about the daughters of Ehsan Jaffri, the ex-Member of Parliament from the Congress Party, being killed along with him in Ahmedabad.  The Jaffri family wrote saying that his children were not in the city at the time, and in fact one of them is living in the USA. 

When the discrepancy was pointed out she says that she got the information from two other sources one a report in the Time magazine of the USA, and another an "independent fact-finding mission" which consisted of a former Inspector General of Police of Tripura and a former Finance Secretary, Government of India.  Roy admitted her mistake in a letter to Outlook dated May 27, 2002.  The amazing part of the apology letter is as follows:  "This and other genuine errors in recounting the details of the violence in Gujarat in no way alters the substance of what journalists, fact-finding missions, or writers like myself are saying." Which means that one can have the facts wrong, but still hold on to the conclusion that is arrived at on the basis of the wrong facts.  Or is it a case that one arrives at a conclusion and then find the facts that would fit the conclusion?  This is a standard practice for the English media in India.

Why, as a nation, we face crisis again and again?

The answer to the above question is nicely summarized in this poem by German poet Erich Fried, translated and reproduced in English by Sri. Jagmohan Malhotra (Former Governor J & K, Former MP Rajya Sabha) in his famous book on Kashmir - "My frozen turbulence in Kashmir".

It has happened
and it goes on happening
and will happen again
if nothing happens to stop it.
The innocent knew nothing
because they are too innocent.
The poor do not notice
because they are too poor.
And the rich do not notice
because they are too rich.
The stupid shrug their shoulders

because they are too stupid.
And the clever shrug their shoulders
because they are too cleaver.
The young do not care
because they are too young.
And the old do not care
because they are too old.
That is why nothing happens to stop it.
And that is why it has happened
And goes on happening
And will happen again.