Must be Spring cleaning time. Because people are being taken to the cleaners. Yesterday I reported that Media Crooks gave an ex-judge of the supreme court of India (how do they select these fellows, I wonder) a dhulai and today I am reporting that Sandeep has stripped Rohit Pradhan at the dhobi ghat.

{For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Hindi, ‘dhulai’ means a wash, and ‘dhobi ghat’ is where the laundry is done. Not only do you get informed about important happenings, but you also get language lessons. What a deal.}

You have to read the entire piece by Sandeep which is titled “Rohit Setalvad Owaisi Pradhan’s Perverse Communalism.” Below I just give you a sense of what it is about.

The embedded quotes in the excerpt are from Rohit Pradhan’s article in Outlook magazine, “What Makes Modi Unacceptable.”

. . . we shall examine the first of his several essay-length contradictions.

The strongest argument against Modi is…that he is seen as the face of 2002 riots. He is viewed as emblematic of India’s unfair treatment of its minorities; a thin veneer of secularism hiding an ugly face of Hindu majoritarianism.

Sure Modi is “seen” and “viewed” as all these things in just the same way that I “see” and “view” Rohit Pradhan as a dimwit who can’t make a reasoned argument; in the same way that I “see” and “view” Rohit Pradhan as a Hindu hater and in the same way that I “see” and “view” Rohit Pradhan as someone filled with baseless hatred against Narendra Modi who has appeased no caste or community or sect so far, and in the same way that Rohit Pradhan’s Institution is emblematic of Think Tanks’ misleading representation of their stated goals; a thin veneer of Indian National Interest hiding an ugly face of Muslim appeasement.

And then in the very next line, he says:

Now, it would be unfair to blame Modi entirely for this troubling state of affairs.

In which case, why does Rohit Pradhan characterize him as emblematic of Hindu majoritarianism? Does Rohit Pradhan even know what real Hindu majoritarianism would entail? It would entail the fair and even sympathetic treatment of Muslims by Hindu kings—even the iconic Krishnadevaraya had a copy of the Koran kept next to his throne as a symbol proclaiming that he treated Islam with equal respect. Like him, almost every Hindu king gave grants to and allowed Muslims to build mosques and practice their faith without fear. And as things stand, Muslims in Gujarat are much better off compared to Muslims in other states. Rohit Pradhan also needs to show us evidence of exactly one riot or criminal act against Muslims under Modi’s decade-long dispensation. Just one. (Tehelka’s doctored reports and fake sting ops don’t count.) And this in a state notorious for Hindu-Muslim riots, all of them under Congress rule. Indeed, a Vastanvi heaping praise on Modi says a lot.

This then seems to be the ire of the likes of Rohit Pradhan. Under the guise of criticizing an imaginary threat of “ugly” Hindu majoritarianism, they want Muslims to be mollycoddled; they want Muslims to be treated as second class citizens instead of as equals who can compete on the strength of their merit; they want Muslims to be afraid of Hindus and they want special privileges for Muslims because they’re minorities—aren’t minorities human beings?; they want the Indian state to tax the majority to subsidize the minorities; they want the Indian state to privilege one group of people at the expense of the other based not on reason or need but religion. Why?

Go read the whole article by Sandeep.

Thank goodness that there are alternative channels these days — blogs and such — that allow people like Media Crooks, Sandeep and others to challenge the tripe that magazines and newspapers (broadly speaking “paid media”) like Outlook, Tehelka, The Hindu, etc., carry.