Vimoh's Blog

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. — A J Liebling

Dear NDTV and Barkha Dutt. Hope you are well, now that you have arm-twisted CKunte into submission.

Don’t get me wrong. You have as much right to sue people as I do. Especially when your reputations are at stake. But here are a few reasons why your approach may not be best suited to the present circumstances.

Following the terrorist attacks that happened in Mumbai on 26 November, 2008, many people took offence to the way Barkha Dutt reported the event. Her reporting was called “shoddy” and “irresponsible” (among other things).

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My previous blog post “Open letter to the media” got me heartening email response from far away. Publishing it here with the writer’s permission:

Dear Vimoh,

First of all I hope you are doing well considering the circumstances Mumbai is in at the moment.

I read your “open letter to the media” and it touched me, somehow I wanted to let you know this. I am Dutch and working in an international company with many expats. The Mumbai attacks have shocked us all, especially our Indian colleagues and friends. When I read your letter out loud to my colleague/friend who sits next to me, she’s from South America, she became very quiet. A few moments later she said it was so right and so true. In the meantime colleagues from all over the world have read your letter and no matter where they are from, what they do or who they believe in; we all agree.

To be honest I don’t really know what to say, but I just wanted to let you know that you are not the only person who feels like this about terrorists. We all feel like this, it’s universal. I hope that the thought of you not being alone with these feelings can be a bit of support – it’s all I can offer you.

All the best,
LM

Thanks for the kind words LM. Appreciate it! Gladder still to see someone from so far away understand the fact that living in a secular democracy is a privilege we can’t take for granted.

Dear mass media of my country.

I know you are analytical & highly educated people, and have my best interests at heart. But you are also blind. Allow me to explain.

A band of murderers pops out of nowhere and kills a whole lot of everyday folks (just like me) and then send you a letter (or a video, or an email) telling you who they would like to be known as and who they represent and what they want.

You then, in your great wisdom, read their lies to the whole nation aloud (with flashy lights and exciting music in the background for added effect).

Please stop doing that! It is fucking irritating!

I, and many others like me, can do without their lies. And it irritates to see you repeat their lies for them.

Can’t you tell?

I don’t care what they are called. I don’t care where they are from. I don’t care who they think they are doing this for. They killed people – they are murderers.

Stop calling them Islamists or Hindus or activists or outfits. Words like ‘criminal’ and ‘murderer’ work just fine.

If they need to kill people to get the governments’ attention, then they don’t deserve ANY attention. In fact, I would go so far as to say that murderers don’t deserve freedom of speech.

I would love for them to be nameless and uncategorised. The whole lot of them undesirables. I would like them to be put away for life, with no one ever seeing them again, or hearing of from them, or hearing of them and their so-called ’cause’.

Update: I received an email in response to this post. Read it here.

In my home state of Orissa, in the last few weeks, Christians have been threatened, attacked, raped and murdered by people calling themselves Hindu. I want this to be an open letter to those murderers and criminals.

Let me get this straight. You are honourable members of the Hindu faith who feel violated by Christian intruders’ attempts to turn honest and god-fearing Hindus (such as yourself) to their faith. That’s it, right?

May I ask you which tenets of Hinduism ask you to maim, murder, and humiliate unarmed people in order to defend the faith you so claim to love? Where in all of those oft-quoted religious texts does violence against the unarmed find mention as one of your weapons?

Are you sure it is your religion that is making you do this? Are you sure you are not doing this because you are a gutless, illiterate, psychopathic criminal? Are you sure you are not doing this because you enjoy the killing and the raping? Or maybe you know all this and still choose to blame it on your religion. Religions don’t talk back, do they?

You decide to go do some manhunting. You find there is no way you can do all that and still have claim to residence in civilised society. So you rev up the rhetoric and call forth other criminals like yourself. You hide behind political organisations and religious bodies and do your killing conveniently. Anyone who opposes you automatically becomes a faithless traitor (or to use a more fashionable phrase, a ‘pseudo-secularist’).

Here comes another crucial part of your motivation. You just want to hurt. You are angry at a lot of things in your life. But not enough to fight. So you carefully choose people who can’t fight back. Going out and out criminal will cause you to go against the law. You don’t want that. Joining the army includes considerable risk to life and limb. So that is out of the question as well. Why not take it out on the helpless and the weak? If someone raises their voice, you can always play the ‘defender of faith‘ card, right?

That, right there, is your little game.

Tell you what… I am done with you. From what I have read, Hinduism is hard to define. We don’t worship one god, nor many. We don’t abhor violence, neither do we embrace it. But if it comes right down to the dirty matter of choosing sides, you can count me out of your little criminal club.

You and I are not the same. If you are a Hindu, I am not. I wish I could claim Hinduism as my own private little garden, but then I would have to breathe the same air as you scum. I would rather remain faithless then have anything to do with you.