Stoning of Ganesh idols in Miraj

[DomainK]

To all those who are crying tears of blood for the "muslim audacity"' date=' I request you to provide two concrete proposals which would end these kind of sectarian attacks (whatever religion).[/quote']

The incident is horrific, what's more sad and horrific are the generalizations by supposedly educated posters on this thread. Frankly, if this is the attitude Hindus carry towards the general Muslim population then I don't find it surprising that they are getting more violent and disenchanted. Have people forgotten the Babri Masjid demolition in such a hurry to cast stones at other communities en masse? This is nothing compared to the wave of Hindutva which was whipped up at that time and barbarians let lose. I suppose it's alright for me or anyone to cast all Hindus as barbarians based on that? Coming to the question of the media, in an ideal world yes, there should be free and unbiased reporting giving equal weightage to all similar incidents. But in the current communally charged scenario, I don't mind the media downplaying such incidents which might make the existing and unjustifiable anger and hatred towards minority even more accute.

Good posts guys. Its very unfortunate and sad to see that so many people in India stay in a constant state of agitation. They stay instigated as if they have waited for such incidents to happen and subconsciously they feel vindicated when it happens as it presents an opportunity to show the rival community in bad light. On the name of religion, caste, region, state, communities so many people spend so much time trying to belittle and demean each other.

[seedhi]

Coming to the question of the media' date=' in an ideal world yes, there should be free and unbiased reporting giving equal weightage to all similar incidents. But in the current communally charged scenario, I don't mind the media downplaying such incidents which might make the existing and unjustifiable anger and hatred towards minority even more accute.[/quote']Strongly disagree. If incidents of minority violence are not highlighted then it will keep on strengthening the fanatics in that community. It will simply encourage more violence, that one day might erupt into something big which can snowball into who knows what. If, suppose, there is again this sort of violence in which Hindu devotees are harmed (like in Godhra) then no amount of media black out may be able to prevent a very violent reaction. Not to mention this is a slippery slope. Today stoning of idols is ignored by media, maybe tomorrow murder and rape may also be ignored. Logic will be the same.

[The Outsider]

Strongly disagree. If incidents of minority violence are not highlighted then it will keep on strengthening the fanatics in that community. It will simply encourage more violence, that one day might erupt into something big which can snowball into who knows what. If, suppose, there is again this sort of violence in which Hindu devotees are harmed (like in Godhra) then no amount of media black out may be able to prevent a very violent reaction. Not to mention this is a slippery slope. Today stoning of idols is ignored by media, maybe tomorrow murder and rape may also be ignored. Logic will be the same.

Highlighted in what sense? By the likes of Aaj Tak and India TV? You seriously think that will serve to improve the situation. I would rather our garbage media underplay these kind of incidents than overplay them. And the incident was not ignored by the media - I read it before you made a post about it. They did not go overboard with it, and I agree with that. Your comparison of this with the Varun Gandhi incident is a red herring - on one hand is a localized riot in a small town and on the other hand is a leader of national(or at the very least the largest state) stature making inflammatory and communal statements during election rallies.

[Ram]

Just curious though' date=' what exactly is this site policy? We seemed to have a very animated debate about Varun Gandhi's "hate" speech. Why not have one on this topic? Dont you agree that such a blatant act of disrespect is despicable? The bar is really not very high, but can we atleast do better than Indian media?[/quote']

Certainly. ICF shouldn't really be shy in discussing religious issues (mudslinging other religious views is definitely not what I am asking for). We come from a supposedly secular country, shouldn't we be more open towards this than others ? Just my 2 cents.

Truly appreciate/respect your guys wont for informed/civic debate. But unfortunately, as we have seen a thousand times in the past in this very site, what generally starts out as pretending to be a civil discussion, slowly but surely degenerates into some form of name-calling and malicious propaganda aimed at one particular community or the other. Unfortunately, the moderators/senior posters of this site don’t have all the time in the world to allow debates centered around religion to flourish right till the point when it turns ugly and then decide to kill it. And that is why, we prefer to nip these discussion in the bud itself. Agreed, its not the most logical way, but it is however, VERY effective. One thing that the founders/admins/moderators and other senior members of the site have all agreed to unison is that we shall NEVER allow ICF to be as a tool/vehicle for someone to come and spew out their hate agenda, whatever the target community be. You guys may think that, just like the Indian media, we’re also biased towards minorities. Nothing could be far from the truth.

[The Outsider]

What media blackout are people talking about anyways : http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&ned=in&hl=en&q=miraj The news was on the front page of my google news page the very day it happened.

[EnterTheVoid]

All this will do is spread hatred, fear and paranoia between hindus and muslims, with constant back and forth bickering of the he started / she started nonsense. Lock thread.

[seedhi]

Highlighted in what sense? By the likes of Aaj Tak and India TV? You seriously think that will serve to improve the situation. I would rather our garbage media underplay these kind of incidents than overplay them.

Do you remember what happened during the pub attacks? Or the Orissa violence? Or the attacks on Churches in Mangalore? At that time, the coverage to these incidents was given all through the day. The incidents were "analyzed" and the blame was clearly sought to be fixed at the doorstep of Hindus or at least Hindu organizations. Then why was the youtube clipping not broadcast in the media? It is clear double standard.

And the incident was not ignored by the media - I read it before you made a post about it. They did not go overboard with it, and I agree with that. Your comparison of this with the Varun Gandhi incident is a red herring - on one hand is a localized riot in a small town and on the other hand is a leader of national(or at the very least the largest state) stature making inflammatory and communal statements during election rallies.

What about the pub attacks? Were they not "localized"? Varun Gandhi gave speeches in Pilibhit - that was also local. My simple point is this - none of the videos of the Miraj stonings were shown on the media, which smacks of bias in reporting.

[seedhi]

What media blackout are people talking about anyways : http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&ned=in&hl=en&q=miraj The news was on the front page of my google news page the very day it happened.

I am talking of CNN-IBN, NDTV and the rest of the national news channels which did not hesitate for a second to broadcast Varun Gandhi's speeches or the video of pub violence in Mangalore, but did not show this controversial video when the minority community indulges in violence.

[seedhi]

Maha requests Centre to ban Youtube clipping of Miraj violence http://www.samaylive.com/news/maha-requests-centre-to-ban-youtube-clipping-of-miraj-violence/655915.html Amazing, just amazing.

[DomainK]

Truly appreciate/respect your guys wont for informed/civic debate. But unfortunately, as we have seen a thousand times in the past in this very site, what generally starts out as pretending to be a civil discussion, slowly but surely degenerates into some form of name-calling and malicious propaganda aimed at one particular community or the other. Unfortunately, the moderators/senior posters of this site don’t have all the time in the world to allow debates centered around religion to flourish right till the point when it turns ugly and then decide to kill it. And that is why, we prefer to nip these discussion in the bud itself. Agreed, its not the most logical way, but it is however, VERY effective. One thing that the founders/admins/moderators and other senior members of the site have all agreed to unison is that we shall NEVER allow ICF to be as a tool/vehicle for someone to come and spew out their hate agenda, whatever the target community be. You guys may think that, just like the Indian media, we’re also biased towards minorities. Nothing could be far from the truth.

And besides, ICF should respect every member equally irrespective of what religion/state/community they come from. Threads that generalize and spread hatred are against hurt many members directly and indirectly. An open discussion on religion can not stay civilized for long on the internet. Its bound to take ugly turn. I fully support ICF admin team's decision not to allow such discussions that could potentially turn ugly. I think its time for the mods to close the thread.

[The Outsider]

Do you remember what happened during the pub attacks? Or the Orissa violence? Or the attacks on Churches in Mangalore? At that time, the coverage to these incidents was given all through the day. The incidents were "analyzed" and the blame was clearly sought to be fixed at the doorstep of Hindus or at least Hindu organizations. Then why was the youtube clipping not broadcast in the media? It is clear double standard.

Weren't the pub attacks carried out by Sri Ram Sena, which has ties with RSS and BJP? There was no involvement of any political/religous party here. It was a purely local incident of religious intolerance. Attacks on churches in Mangalore didn't get much coverage as far as I know and Orissa is a recurring problem. I am sure if things like this keep on happening in Miraj there will be more and more coverage. Are you denying the involvement of a Hindu organization in the Mangalore pub attacks?

What about the pub attacks? Were they not "localized"? Varun Gandhi gave speeches in Pilibhit - that was also local. My simple point is this - none of the videos of the Miraj stonings were shown on the media, which smacks of bias in reporting.

Now you are resorting to sophistry. Varun Gandhi might have given his speeches in Pilibhit, but Varun Gandhi is a known name and figure nationally or at least in North India and was fighting an election as a candidate of the second most popular political party in India. How you see the equivalence between what happened in Miraj and Varun Gandhi's speeches is beyond me? I am not saying all is fine with our media, far from it. But our society is ridden with too much hatred along all sorts of fissures. This thread is a perfect example of how some people did not waste a minute before castigating the entire Muslim community based on what they saw in the video. I am also not saying to not report these kind of incidents, but they should not be given more weightage than they are worth - a local, religious, strife. If the media went ballistic over some church attack in Mangalore then that was also wrong. But the equivalence of this incident is not of the magnitude of a nationally known political leader giving hate speeches, recurring violence in Orissa, or beating up of women by a religous outfit with ties to RSS and BJP.

[seedhi]

Weren't the pub attacks carried out by Sri Ram Sena' date=' which has ties with RSS and BJP? There was no involvement of any political/religous party here. It was a purely local incident of religious intolerance. Attacks on churches in Mangalore didn't get much coverage as far as I know and Orissa is a recurring problem. I am sure if things like this keep on happening in Miraj there will be more and more coverage. Are you denying the involvement of a Hindu organization in the Mangalore pub attacks? [/quote']How the hell does it matter who carried out the pub attacks? They were wrong, and they were given widespread coverage. Attacks on churches got much more coverage than this incident.The video of the attacks was broadcast nationally for several days. The video that I posted was not shown EVEN ONCE on any of the major news channels.

Now you are resorting to sophistry. Varun Gandhi might have given his speeches in Pilibhit, but Varun Gandhi is a known name and figure nationally or at least in North India and was fighting an election as a candidate of the second most popular political party in India. How you see the equivalence between what happened in Miraj and Varun Gandhi's speeches is beyond me?

Are you kidding me? In the Varun Gandhi case - he made speeches, there was no violence and no one was hurt. The speeches were wrong and deserved to be covered. In this case there was widespread violence, idols of Ganesh were stoned, the pandals were destroyed. Look at the video for God's sake. YOU TELL ME WHAT IS IMPORTANT - INFLAMMATORY SPEECHES OF A POLITICIAN OR AN ACTUAL RIOT IN WHICH THERE IS VIOLENCE WHICH STARTED BECAUSE THE STONING OF GANESH IDOLS!! According to your logic, inflammatory speeches can be given 24hrs coverage but when there is actual violence and destruction of property then the media should play it down. I can only marvel at your perverted thinking.

I am not saying all is fine with our media, far from it. But our society is ridden with too much hatred along all sorts of fissures. This thread is a perfect example of how some people did not waste a minute before castigating the entire Muslim community based on what they saw in the video. I am also not saying to not report these kind of incidents, but they should not be given more weightage than they are worth - a local, religious, strife. If the media went ballistic over some church attack in Mangalore then that was also wrong. But the equivalence of this incident is not of the magnitude of a nationally known political leader giving hate speeches, recurring violence in Orissa, or beating up of women by a religous outfit with ties to RSS and BJP.

Amazing, there is a riot, entire district is under curfew, people are hurt (there was even one stabbing), idols are stoned, pandals are vandalized and all this is not as important as a candidate giving inflammatory speeches according to you. What an absurd line of thought.

[yoda]

BTW Varun Gandhi did not abuse a religion, it's god/prophet or it's people. He only said there will be tit-for-tat revenge if there is violence against Hindus. It might be inciteful, but no one can blame him of defaming or hurting any religion or anyone's religious sentiment. On the contrary, here you have a blatant abuse of a religion. How any self respecting Hindu can tolerate such BS is beyond me. Anyways, shame on those who engaged in such a despicable act.

[cybervickey]

http://www.ivarta.com/_images/C18_AE_ganeshsandals.gif

[The Outsider]

YOU TELL ME WHAT IS IMPORTANT - INFLAMMATORY SPEECHES OF A POLITICIAN OR AN ACTUAL RIOT IN WHICH THERE IS VIOLENCE WHICH STARTED BECAUSE THE STONING OF GANESH IDOLS!!

Of course the inflammatory speech of a nationally recognized politician is more important, for it has the potential to incite many more riots like this. If loss of lives and public property is your only concern how many replies and what response did I receive to this thread of mine: http://indiancricketfans.com/showthread.php?t=133071 I will attempt to answer the rest of your post later, but frankly speaking you are floating into incoherency.

[ludhianvi]

Kaala Bandar :regular_smile:

[seedhi]

Of course the inflammatory speech of a nationally recognized politician is more important' date=' for it has the potential to incite many more riots like this. [/quote']Ok so a speech which "might" incite riots is more important than the riot itself? Ridiculous. And your circuitous logic has bitten you in the back because if this is what you believe then the media should have suppressed the speeches of Varun Gandhi in order to avoid riots. The simple point is that communal incidents need to covered even handedly which has clearly not been the case in this incident.

If loss of lives and public property is your only concern how many replies and what response did I receive to this thread of mine: http://indiancricketfans.com/showthread.php?t=133071 I will attempt to answer the rest of your post later, but frankly speaking you are floating into incoherency.

A completely irrelevant segue.

[ViruRulez]

It is really despicable and the culprits should face the most severe of punishments. Although I am not a very religious person myself but anything that hurts any religion is a severe crime and should be dealt with severely. I would have given life imprisonment to any such person who does such acts. I agree to some extent that Indian media is biased and there should be proper news reporting. Every news should be given utmost prominence. Anyways I laugh out my heart when I watch Indian news channels today. Most of them are really pathetic. News channels nowadays show which dog Obama or Bush has bought but hardly show actual Indian news. One example of the pathetic level of reporting of Indian media is the tracking of swine flu. When there were just a dozen swine flu deaths in India, then all Indian news channels were reporting it all day but nowadays it is not reported at all. And believe me I am personally tracking swine flu for one of my websites and the number of daily swine flu deaths in India is perhaps the highest in the world. There are around 5-10 persons dying everyday from the swine flu and the total death toll has crossed 150 but Indian media has forgot about the H1N1 flu completely it seem. :(

[Texy]

The incident is horrific' date=' what's more sad and horrific are the generalizations by supposedly educated posters on this thread. Frankly, if this is the attitude [b']Hindus carry towards the general Muslim population then I don't find it surprising that they are getting more violent and disenchanted. Have people forgotten the Babri Masjid demolition in such a hurry to cast stones at other communities en masse? This is nothing compared to the wave of Hindutva which was whipped up at that time and barbarians let lose. I suppose it's alright for me or anyone to cast all Hindus as barbarians based on that? Coming to the question of the media, in an ideal world yes, there should be free and unbiased reporting giving equal weightage to all similar incidents. But in the current communally charged scenario, I don't mind the media downplaying such incidents which might make the existing and unjustifiable anger and hatred towards minority even more accute.

That didn't make sense at all.... 1st of all... impression others have for them is based on the actions carried out by people from their community and mind you many of those perpetrators were well educated and 2nd of all...any civic sense justifies correcting the general fear and disgust people have against them by acting civil and non violent ways......you're suggesting...impression people have against them which 1st of all is based on their actions inspires them to act like lunatics and terrorists.... that will feed into the generalization that people already has against them..... instead of dousing the fire, you are lighting it up even more and what's more surprising is the AUDACITY they have to carry this out in a country where they are the MINORITY!!!

[Texy]

Maha requests Centre to ban Youtube clipping of Miraj violence http://www.samaylive.com/news/maha-requests-centre-to-ban-youtube-clipping-of-miraj-violence/655915.html Amazing, just amazing.

Disgusting.....