Why Malda is different from Dadri — Reddit India users decode the two!

So yesterday I posted this cartoon from Kureel on Reddit India page. Not that I believe in what cartoon portrays but the cartoon was talking something a part of social media was whining about — Malda is not covered by media in ways how it covered Dadri! On Facebook there were friends who were tagging me in posts (photoshopped images from different parts of nation served as from Malda, photos of leaders who visited Dadri included among other images) and asking, why am I not writing blogs on Malda when I was ‘quick’ to write on Dadri! Guess many have faced this in their own respective circles. I had to remind my friend that I wrote a piece on Dadri only after my Prime Minister spoke on Dadri, that he should hold his horses! Coming to the post on Reddit — contrary to what was running on other social media sites, Reddit had some sensible arguments, in fact most of them were not agreeing with the cartoon, they were talking about how Dadri was different from Malda. And one comment at a time, it debunked whole theatre of vitriol to project Malda as another Dadri albeit with some role reversals! Here’s what they said.

If you are familiar with Reddit, you’ll know how minute their inspections can be. This cartoon was not spared either. Many were quick to criticize the portrayals.

TLDR for this cartoon

Murderers who are Hindu are innocent baby faced .

Rioters who are mooslimes are angry thug faced .

No wonder the RSS are called chaddies — must be invoking all that innocence

And then another user quickly added:

Even scaling is wrong in the cartoon. Mob of 200 Hindu men = 1 man. Mob of 2.5 lakh Muslim men also =1 man.

There were other voices too.

We see what we want to see.

The real tldr:

The Hindu murderer is dumb founded by the response of people.

The Muslim rioter doesn’t see anybody opposing his actions and continues to riot.

Internet is a wonder place. No wonder people find connections from wild corners. Here’s when someone remembered Mani Ratnam’s Bombay!

Something similar was there in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay movie too, all those years back.

The parents of both the hero and heroine were very angry about their kids’ plans.

However, the father of the Hindu hero — his anger was limited to shouting and looking angry. The father of the Muslim heroine — was slapping her about and swinging a machete at her and everyone else.

Doubt if the director even noticed that!

A sweet innocent cute sangi rioter and and a vicious mulla rioter guess I have seen everything now

Someone later brought some sense.

Of course, the circumstances that kicked off Dadri were allegations of eating beef, the raiding party was led by a BJP MP’s son, another BJP MP went there and talked of handing guns to residents of Dadri(A completely illegal act by the way) while Malda was kicked of by some assholes who were protesting against a person calling Muhammad gay(What did we do the last time someone drew Saraswati nude, by the way?), assholes who destroyed and vandalised Govt property but nonetheless didn’t kill anyone.

Then there were arguments that Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal to which Malda belongs is shielding the perpetrators because they belong to a particular religion but alas, this user debunked it for all.

If you genuinely think Mamata just shields Muslim goons, I feel sorry for you oh sweet sweet summer child. She shields rapists who have nothing to do with her or her party(The Park Street case) she shields murderers, criminals, terrorists and so on. Her only concern right now is to make it look like West Bengal is crimeless, which she does by making all criminals evade the justice system. She is the benefactor of all criminals, not just these.

Then there were discussions about how it’s just two districts were Muslim population is more not ‘many’ but some other user quickly corrected how most of the migrants from Bangladesh are not covered under census and that they form major part of WB.

If you are not aware, this whole violence started after a right wing leader from UP called Prophet Muhammad a Gay. Not just Malda but many parts of India erupted in protests but most of them were peaceful except Malda where it turned violent. On social media there are many who say they should have not protested over such a statement; just ignored it. Reddit users were quick to remind of how people protested against M F Hussain over his paintings. One reminded everyone how in a Dadri, the prime accused was Vishal, the son of BJP leader Sanjay Rana.

Referring to the mf hussein incident? I don’t remember a 250,000 strong angry mob burning a police station down and beating up police officers.

And in another thread on comparison about two, here’s how one user called it off!

Sure. But which of the two incidents led to death? Dadri.

Which of the two incidents was uninstigated (by the victims)? Dadri.

Which of the two incidents involved a planned attack instead of mindless violence? Dadri.

…

Normal people do not choose to “outrage”. They do so as a natural reaction. You can’t go around asking people why they aren’t outraging this time or that time. It either happens or it doesn’t.

Anyhow, fuck Hindus. Fuck Muslims.

P.S. And fuck Xtians too.

Another user replied him/her wisely.

Sure. But which of the two incidents led to death? Dadri.

Several shops and houses and an entire police station was torched at Malda. The mob which rioted ranged from 30,000 to 250,000 as per different estimates. Just because we luckily had no deaths(but many people were injured) doesn’t make it trivial. It could have gotten a lot worse, and it won’t be the last time such a thing happens.

Which of the two incidents was uninstigated? Dadri.

What instigation did the local administration, policemen and Hindu residents/shopkeepers of Malda give for that mob to come burn down their police station, shops and houses? If they wanted only to protest against Kamlesh Tiwari why not attack Tiwari’s house?

Normal people do not choose to “outrage”. They do so as a natural reaction. You can’t go around asking people why they aren’t outraging this time or that time. It either happens or it doesn’t.

These aren’t normal people I’m talking about. Normal people did not suddenly see any sharp rise in intolerance during the Bihar election campaign. All the repetitive public debate, whining and finger-pointing was by left-leaning media, intellectuals, filmmakers etc. who were acting as if we had suddenly become Hindu Pakistan and the world was ending but immediately shut their mouths after the election results came out for Bihar.

Yeah, that’s pretty suspicious. Fuck anyone who expresses self-riteous outrage and hijacks genuine issues for a political agenda.

The argument that media didn’t cover Malda is mostly not right. Media did, especially print media. This scroll article pretty much sums why media ignored Malda violence. Moreover media ignores or doesn’t cover many things, mostly those that are far away from Mumbai and Delhi. Senior Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai calls it ‘tyranny of distance’. And more importantly there was Pathankot Attack which in my view was more important news than Malda. Had media covered Malda and ignored Pathankot, I’m quite sure people would have called for shut down of media houses like they did for NDTV few days ago over NSA Doval! A Reddit user even pointed out how media didn’t even cover this incident were BJP activists were busy torching buses! So media doesn’t cover many things — to allege of biases and malafide intentions would be gross exaggeration. They do most of what they do to attract TRPs!

I had titled my Reddit submission as ‘A Picture is worth many words. A cartoon is worth lot lot more! Cartoon from Kureel on Malda & Dadri — A tale of two cities.’ So a user commented.

This cartoon may be worth more than thousand words. But it still doesn’t take into account many things.

Firstly, Dadri happened right before elections — both parties had incentives to stoke the fire. The whole things was organized by a BJP MLA and the opposition with their media friends rightly took opportunity to milk the other votebank.

Secondly, as our BJP friends here keep saying time and again, these communal tensions are not new to India and ‘rising intolerance’ is a sham. This means, there have been many other cases of Hindus killing Muslims that did not result in #awardwapsi. Why do you compare only Dadri and Malda then unless you have an agenda?

As part of a diverse country, any responsible citizen would want two things — identify things that are causing communal tensions and address them, and two, not use these flareups to antagonize people further.

But just like Congress and its cronies stoked the fire caused by the BJP MLA at Dadri, BJP is milking the Malda incident to cry about their propaganda.

Anybody crying hoarse today is as guilty as those who cried hoarse during Dadri.

On lighter note, few of the users were asking a very important question too — why is the author farting in second part of the image? Anyways, find your answer yourself!

My suggestion will be to discover your truth, don’t buy what that person says on Social Media for most of it is done to incite and provoke the other. Remember that most of these things occur when elections are round the corner, Dadri before Bihar elections and now Malda before Bengal polls! You, my dear reader, stay out of such muck. Have a sane mind; don’t always buy what you read online. If you ask any Bengali, they will tell you how all this protests and violence is not new to their state. ‘Cholbena’ is an everyday word for them. Protests are part of everyday life in Bengal. No, that doesn’t mean they support violence or gain pleasure from them but that Malda incident is not new to Bengal. They know how to deal with it. Like this editor of a major Bengal Daily said when asked why reportage on Malda is low key.

“We have done it deliberately. This is already a crime-prone area and we didn’t feel it was important enough to be given so much publicity. This is a case of localised communal tension. We didn’t want to create a problem when there isn’t one. Some political parties have tried to build it up. We have ignored it. This is a conscious policy on our part.”

This is India my friend and most of the things here are political! Just have a sane mind. Don’t always get provoked. Think before you act!

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