Be it Tarique Ali or Maria Misra or Amit Chaudhary, all those who are doing the important job of highlighting the discriminations that Muslims have suffered in India, must not forget that the battle against terrorism should also mean fighting against a perceived sense of victimization. The distinction between ‘real’ and ‘perceived’ discrimination is important; while calling out the former, responsible public intellectuals should be careful not to contribute to the latter, which fuels extremist positions, be it Islamic or Hindu nationalist.

“So while Muslim “terrorists” have been subject to extraordinary laws of detention and trial in special courts, Hindu nationalist “rioters” have been tried in regular courts, or, more usually, not been punished at all.”

Such a bland generalization does not help. Has Misra forgotten the not so recent case of Dara Singh, the Hindu nationalist ‘rioter,’ who was tried, convicted and is serving life term for killing Graham Staines, the Australian missionary in Orissa?

[I]t is unlikely a terrorist, smuggler or hawala operator in India would use a Blackberry – while a Blackberry is traced to a user, the same cannot be said about throwaway Hotmail and Yahoo addresses accessed from a cybercafe (Apr 2008)

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