Godhra exposed a chink in the secularists’ armour—fear. Their muted response to the burning alive of Hindu pilgrims trapped in the Sabarmati Express gave way to loud denunciations once the Hindus began to retaliate. There were attempts to justify the train massacre, which was supposed to have been the result of some form of “provocation”. This was soon seen to be a fabrication. Nonetheless, a climate was created in which the original attack faded into the background and all the blame was heaped on the Hindu community.

FEAR IS THE KEY:The Godhra attack faded into background while the Hindu retaliation was decried

This attempt to put the blame on the Hindus has to be contrasted with media behaviour when they are themselves at the receiving end of Muslim violence. All four English newspapers in Bangalore have had their offices vandalised by Muslim mobs on the flimsiest of pretexts. Each time the management in question has published an apology for “hurting the sentiments of the community”. Imagine, the victim apologising to the attacker! This suggests that fear of violence rather than any moral principle or ideology is behind the conduct of the secularist intelligentsia. So hypocrisy and self-righteous posturing take the place of morality.

The root cause of this perversion, of using Hindu baiting to protect against possible Muslim violence, is a state of mind, which the great Egyptian-born Islamic scholar Bat Ye’or calls “dhimmitude”. It is the outgrowth of centuries of Islamic imperialism, which provided a measure of protection to non-Muslim subjects as long as they accepted their status as second-class citizens as decreed by the Sharia (Islamic law). This was enforced through terror. Jehad is a permanent war against unbelievers that leads to dhimmitude. This dhimmi state of mind is what the secularists have internalised out of their fear of Muslim violence. This fear though, is given ideological respectability by painting the Hindus as aggressors against “secularism”. In the name of “secularism”, every Muslim demand was met including such anti-humanist ones like denying support to divorced Muslim women.

The secularists are acting under the assumption that it is safe to offend the Hindus, but one has to be careful with the Muslims because of their violent tendencies. The message: threat of violence works. The “secular forces” will have only themselves to blame if they become targets of violence. Their dhimmitude will not protect them.