Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Abbas Tyrewala on the Mumbai attacks
I was struck and intrigued at what I read here. This is a story on the reaction of Abbas Tyrewala (I had never heard of him before; I guess I do not follow Bollywood script writers, etc.) to the Mumbai attacks. He talks about his genuine fear of retaliation for the attacks with which he has nothing to do. He admires the Indian people (more precisely the people of Mumbai) for sticking together. The only question he does not ask is what exactly is a backlash? It is my humble submission that one can expect a backlash not from the common people of India, but from the horrid political parties which are known to be behind every one of such backlashes.
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5 comments:
even before he became a script writer for Maqbool etc. he wrote for Sulekha! He seems like a cool guy.
Dear Pipa,
Thanks for the comment.
Best regards, Anant
Dear Anant,
Thank you for bringing to my notice the statements made by Mr. Abbas Tyrewala, the noted film maker.
I do not really understand why the Muslim community should fear a "backlash"? The Mumbai attacks were an aggression towards a country and its financial capital and not against a particular Indian community at all. Going by how the things unfolded, I would rather believe that it was attempted at the west and they chose the places where Westerners congregated in large numbers. So instead of standing up unanimously against such terrorists, if Mr. Tyrewala thinks that he could shift the focus of the people towards the religious divide that has been the bane of the country since its independence, then he is wrong.
The whole world stands witness to the fact that it was not aimed at any Indian community as I have already noted above. Is this a feeling of guilt in the Muslim community that they are in some way responsible for being a part of the society where some of their fundamentalist brethren are trying to destabilize the country? If they are really trying to live in the shadow of a self induced guilt, then God help them. We cannot for the sake of this country have entire communities living in fear. Just imagine if every Catholic started feeling guilty about the forced conversion done by the priests in some rural areas, every Hindu felt responsible for the Malegaon attacks and every Muslim started trying to find their guilt. The entire nation would be reduced to a bunch of paranoid people which would make us unstable as a whole.
I would suggest Mr. Tyrewala to think on this carefully and think twice before making comments in public. Being a public figure I would think that his words carry some weight and some people may be forced to think in terms of what he said.
As the last thing I can only say that if every person at least thinks about the excesses a fraction of his community is committing, then he should come forward and stand up against it and not try to hide away or make such comments that do injustice to the nation.
Best regards,
Sayantan Ghosh.
Dear Sayantan,
I don't think there it has anything to do with guilt. In fact it is fear: you will recall the famous `every action having a reaction' not due to Newton, but due to Modi before the onset of the post-Godhra riots. I thin Tyrewala's fear is because of such events. I don't think after Malegaon any one spoke of action and reaction and hence the question did not arise at that time.
Regards, Anant
Dear Anant,
You wrote: I don't think after Malegaon any one spoke of action and reaction and hence the question did not arise at that time.
In fact, it is claimed that every terrorist attack/blast after 2002 is a "reaction" to the post-Godhra riots. And there have bee quite a few such reaction-attacks/blasts. So, according to your action-reaction theory, shouldn't Hindus also have the "fear" ?!
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