Islamophobia is a dubious distinction. Muslims pull it out at the slightest slight to the youngest but fastest growing religion on the planet. Critics of Islam say raking up Islamophobia is part and parcel of the Muslim strategy to spread Islam. If so, it’s hard to believe Priyanka Chopra and Quantico are part of the strategy. Weird, bizarre. An analysis, for Different Truths.
The Quantico FBI agent finds a rosary on a slain terror suspect and Eureka! “It’s a Hindu prayer rosary”. The Priyanka Quantico character promptly cues in: “It is a false-flag operation to blame Pakistan just before the crucial Kashmir summit!”
Is that so? A rosary on a corpse and that’s proof the dead guy is ‘Hindu – Hindu terror’. Why didn’t the Priyanka Quantico character ask one of the male FBI to open the dead man’s fly and double check?
The so-called Hindu rosary could have been deliberately planted on a Pakistani (Muslim) agent to mislead the FBI. One look at his family crown jewels would have confirmed his identity, more affirmatively than a string of beads!
The Quantico scriptwriter had imagination. But the sort that leaves the viewer to his imagination. Dangerous. Islamophobia was not written into the Quantico script but the embedded “false-flag operation” gave Islamophobia the chance to come into play.
Result: A Bangladeshi scriptwriter got trolled and an Indian celebrity chef got his goose cooked. The Hindu chef tweeted his Islamophobia, wondering how Priyanka failed to see “2000 years of Muslim depredations”.
JW Marriott promptly scrapped his contract citing Islamophobia. The chef is now in a royal emirates soup. Idiot, he should have known that Islam is only 1400 years old!
Islamophobia is a dubious distinction. Muslims pull it out at the slightest slight to the youngest but fastest growing religion on the planet. Critics of Islam say raking up Islamophobia is part and parcel of the Muslim strategy to spread Islam. If so, it’s hard to believe Priyanka Chopra and Quantico are part of the strategy. Weird, bizarre.
Talk of bizarre and it’s not just words that spell Islamophobia. Even gestures make the cut. Narendra Modi refusing to wear the skullcap was Islamophobia. That was expected. All said and done, Modi was an RSS pracharak.
But Rahul Gandhi? June 12, 2018, the Congress President threw an Iftar party to the grand alliance and somebody Muslim put a skullcap on Rahul’s head. But the moment the Muslim turned his back, the Congress chief removed the skullcap. Is that Islamophobia?
Don’t forget Rahul Gandhi is a ‘Janeoudhari Brahmin’ and a proponent of ‘Soft Hinduism’. Also, sitting at the Iftar with Rahul was former President Pranab Mukherjee who had just the other day broken bread with RSS head Mohan Bhagwat. Nagpur is not that very far from Delhi.
Meaning what? Meaning alignments are changing, says the India correspondent of a widely read Pakistani newspaper. The scribe warns that Rahul Gandhi should be wary of the “Bairam Khans” around him – Pranab Mukherjee and other ‘Congress Brahmins’, those who have links with moneybags of the “Mumbai Mercantile Club.”
He says Rahul Gandhi should keep away from those “who play kingmakers”. And, if needed, a sort of Kamaraj Plan should be put into action. The original Kamaraj Plan required ministers to resign and devote themselves to party rejuvenation.
Writing in The Hindu of August 29, 2012, Gopalkrishna Gandhi spoke of a ‘Kamaraj Plan for our times’. “If some Congress ministers are replaced and deployed for party work a new confidence could emerge in the party and the government,” he wrote.
At the time, Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister and his government was mired in cases of corruption. Those were bad days for the Congress. It was a time of crisis. The Kamaraj Plan made Lal Bahadur Shastri PM in 1964. In 1969 it worked for Indira Gandhi. Both times the Congress looked to be in crisis.
Manmohan Singh’s ministers did not resign to effect a Kamraj Plan and it seems the Congress paid for it. Today, a Pakistani newspaper talks of a Kamaraj Plan and it’s kind of weird, bizarre.
But after Shastri, for the Kamaraj Plan to work, the Nehru-Gandhi Family had to be in crisis. So to advice, Rahul Gandhi to give up prime ministerial ambitions is going against the grain of the Kamaraj Plan. Besides, preempting any such deviant desire, Rahul Gandhi has already made it clear that he wants to be Prime Minister.
However, for all the talk of a grand alliance beating the BJP to less than majority and then staking claim to form a government, it must not be forgotten that the so-called ‘Mumbai Mercantile Club’ – kingmakers like Bairam Khan, who made emperors of Humayun and Akbar, and Kamaraj – was okay with coalitions only when led by the Congress.
The UPA ran full-time governments on two occasions. And a BJP majority gave the club an alternative. But t is hard to expect that a regional party satrap will find acceptance with the club. For the grand alliance to form a stable government the Congress will have to lead the alliance.
If Islamophobia is a sign to Muslims to close ranks to shore up Islam, the Kamaraj Plan is a call to resurrect the fortunes of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Not that there is a Kamaraj-type Plan on the cards or whether it will apply when the government is not Congress.
Sushil Kutty
©IPA Service
Photo from the Internet