Another question. ``When Graham Staines and his children were burnt alive,'' he asked, ``did we say that Christian missionaries had made themselves unpopular by engaging in conversion, and so, they had it coming? `No', he said, 'of course, we didn't.''
He then put the most poignant question. ``Why then are these poor karsevaks an exception? Why have we de-humanised them to the extent that we don't even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was and treat it as just another consequence of the VHP's fundamentalist policies?'
So, for Hindus, not the rule of standing by the victim, but the rule of who is at fault will apply. Secular India will not see the why of it, when it condemns the Word Trade Center attack or the Stains murder. But for Godhra, it will seek, even invent, reasons as to why it was inevitable for the victims to die. Why do they do it? Simple. The victims are Hindus.
Why this double standard in Godhra? ``The answer, I suspect,'' said the editor, ``is that we are programmed to see Hindu-Muslim relations in simplistic terms: Hindus provoke, Muslims suffer.''
Being a trained journalist, the editor uses a very sophisticated word, ``programmed.'' What it really means is this: being disposed to lie, to prevaricate, by premeditation. This programming always blames the Hindus as provocateurs and defends the Muslims as victims. This formula is the standard norm of secular India.
One cannot dismiss the secular pack as just another ver
