Now, at last, we know why 26 innocent men, mostly tourists, died at the hands of terrorists in Pahalgam: it was not because there was an intelligence failure, nor because no policemen patrolled the fatal site. It was because their women did not fight to save them.
Had these women studied the life and work of Ahilyabai Holkar, they would have become Viranganas (warrior women).
Never mind that the cited Ahilyabai was not a warrior woman but an educationist and social reformer.
A spokesperson of the ruling BJP further illuminated us (Breaking With Agenda, News 24, 10 AM, May 25) as to how women warriors like the Rani of Jhansi had “fought the Muslims” and the women visiting Pahalgam apparently lacked such motivation
Never mind that Rani of Jhansi actually did not fight against the Muslims, but alongside Muslims, against the British.
It would have helped, according to Ram Chander Jangra, the BJP member of parliament, if the men who were killed had taken some “Agniveer” training; still, the fault lay primarily with the women who did not strike it hot against the gun-wielding terrorists.
It must be Jangra’s view that women are far too strong to have needed “Agniveer” training either.
The historical-cultural point of this is unmistakable: it is the women who always spoil the broth, both within the kitchen and on the battlefield.
This despite the fact that no country in the world worships as many goddesses as we do in India, which also we lovingly have christened “Ma Bharti” too.
Yet, rue the failure of these women to rise to the appellation we bestow on the nation.
Despicably trashy as this read of the killings in Pahalgam is that India’s mass mind has come to be so addled that there will be no dearth of men and women too, both among the populace and the electronic media who will know how to filibuster the gutter-speak of the parliamentarian away from the condemnation and chastisement it deserves.
Quite recently, India’s dashing minister of external affairs stoutly defended democracy as a system of government, and then the great strengths of Indian democracy in particular.
What better proof of the strength of his thesis may be provided than that such voices like that of Jangra – along with Vijay Shah, who dubbed Colonel Sofia Qureshi as sister of Pakistani terrorists, and Jagdish Devda, who gloated how the Indian armed forces now bow at Modi ji’s feet – are free to go berserk with criminal speak while voices that would curb their fulminations are reminded of limits on free speech.
Who knows the truth of that conundrum better than Ali Khan Mahamudabad, now gagged from sense and sensibility?
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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