On Sunday, Sadhvi Pragya, the BJP MP from Bhopal spoke at the Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s South Region annual convention, talking about the rights of Hindus to defend themselves against unilateral aggression. No sooner was the video out, ‘Liberal’ journalists proceeded to misrepresent what she said, spread fake news and claim that the MP was calling for a genocide of Muslims.

Anusha Ravi Sood, a journalist and the political editor of a lesser-known portal called ‘thsouthfirst.com’ tweeted a snippet of the speech by Sadhvi and said, “Terror case-accused @BJP4India MP from Bhopal Pragya Singh Thakur calls for the killing of Muslims during her speech in Karnataka on Sunday during Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s event. “Keep weapons at home. Keep them sharp. If veggies can be cut well, so can the enemy’s head,” she says”.

Terror case-accused @BJP4India MP from Bhopal Pragya Singh Thakur calls for killing of Muslims during her speech in Karnataka on Sunday during Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s event. “Keep weapons at home. Keep them sharp. If veggies can be cut well, so can the enemy’s head,” she says. pic.twitter.com/AoDgOpNbXv

— Anusha Ravi Sood (@anusharavi10) December 26, 2022

Had Sadhvi called for an out-and-out genocide of Muslims, it would be condemnable and prosecutable under the law of the land. No individual, much less an elected representative, has the right to call for the unilateral killing of a certain section of people and vilify an entire group of people based on their religion.

However, Sadhvi did not call for genocide. What Anusha Ravi Sood said was a product of her own interpretation and presumably, a result of her bias against the rights of Hindus and Sadhvi Pragya herself.

Here is a transcript of what Sadhvi said in the snippet posted by Sood:

“Those who do Love Jihad, give them a response like Love Jihad. Keep your girls safe and make sure you impart good Sankar to your girls. Keep weapons in your house. If nothing else, sharpen the vegetable knife and keep it in your house. I am speaking very clearly that even in our house our knives should be sharpened to cut vegetables. They killed our Harsha will knives. They used the knife to kill our Hindu warriors – they killed Hindus and workers from Bajrang Dal, BJP and Yuva Morcha – they killed them up and cut them. So we should also keep our vegetable knives sharp – you don’t know what situation would arise when. So when our vegetables get cut properly then the heads of enemies would also cut properly..”

From the simple translation of the speech itself, it becomes abundantly apparent that Sadhvi did not use the word “Muslim” even once in her speech. A call for genocide would entail someone saying that Hindus need to assemble weapons and murder the next Muslim that they see on the roads – Sadhvi said no such thing. She merely said that Hindus need to keep weapons at home to protect and defend themselves.

In fact, even a Muslim website like Siasat.com had the integrity to publish the correct interpretation of the speech delivered by Sadhvi. Their headline read, “Hindus have right to respond to those, who attack their dignity: Pragya Thakur”.

In the article itself, they wrote, “The MP representing Bhopal Parliamentary segment in Madhya Pradesh also called on the community to at least keep the knives in their homes sharp, as everyone has the right to protect themselves. “Love jihad, they have a tradition of jihad, if nothing they do love jihad. Even if they love they do jihad in that. We (Hindus) too love, love the god, a sanyasi loves his god,” Thakur said”.

The report further reads, “Speaking at the Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s South Region annual convention here on Sunday, she said, “Sanyasi says in this world created by god, end all the oppressors and sinful, if not the true definition of love will not survive here. So answer those involved in Love Jihad the same way. Protect your girls, teach them the right values.” Further, pointing at the killing of Hindu activists including Harsha of Shivamogga, she asked people to keep knives at home sharp for the sake of self-protection. “Keep weapons in your homes, if nothing else, at least knives used to cut vegetables, sharp…Don’t know what situation will arise when. Everyone has the right to self-protection. If someone infiltrates our house and attacks us, giving a befitting replay is our right,” she said”.

The report by Maktoob media, a portal that has often been caught spreading hate against Hindus, was headlined, “BJP MP Pragya Thakur urges Hindus to keep weapons at home, cut enemy’s head”. While in the report itself they interpreted Thakur as talking about Muslims, they did not quote her as using the word “Muslim” in her speech.

Even thesouthfirst.com, the portal where Sood is the political editor, did not attribute a call to genocide to Sadhvi Pragya.

While even Muslim media chose to not quote Pragya out of context, liberal journalists like Sood were more than happy to impose their own interpretation and spread fake news against Sadhvi. It is pertinent to note here that Sadhvi Pragya only spoke about Love Jihad and the fact that the Hindu community has seen unilateral and unbridled violence against themselves and that, they need to keep weapons handy to protect themselves, should a situation arise where the enemy is at the gate, ready to kill, as they did with Harsha and so many other Hindu activists.

The journalist who accused Sadhvi of calling for the genocide of Muslims, first, admitted that Hindus are being murdered unilaterally by elements from within the Muslim community – that admittance itself deserves applause, even if her tweet was not aimed to admit that fact at all, rather, it was aimed at demonising Hindus (especially Sadhvi) and hand the victim card to the Muslim community. That Sadhvi Pragya called for Hindus to defend themselves cannot be misconstrued as a call for genocide simply because even liberal journalists seem to acknowledge that elements from the Muslim community are indulging in unilateral violence against the Hindus. Let us assume for a moment that another community, say the Jains, were unilaterally forcing Hindu girls to convert to Jainism, using force and violence, indulging in mob violence and employing some Jain form of Jihad against the Hindus – would Sadhvi Pragya’s speech apply to them as well? Yes, it would. And since it would, it cannot be said that she called for the murder of Muslims – she called for self-defence – now, that the aggressors happen to be from one community overwhelmingly is immaterial when one has to interpret what she said.

The hypocrisy of the Liberal world is also apparent in the fact that if someone from the Muslim community was giving a call to arms, saying that Hindus are lynching Muslims and that the Muslim community needs to defend themselves, no liberal journalist would have said that they were giving a genocidal call against Hindus – they would have rather claimed that they are scared, insecure about their safety and are therefore talking about protecting themselves in a country where the law enforcement has failed to protect poor Muslims.

Let us take the example of what Mahmood Paracha said in 2019 inside a Mosque. In 2019, Paracha organised a training camp inside a Lucknow Mosque, teaching Muslims how to acquire firearm licenses to combat alleged mob lynching incidents against Muslims. Firstly, Sood, who is now tweeting about Sadhvi, does not have even one tweet where she spoke about what Paracha said in 2019. Secondly, even the media did not credit him with calling for the genocide of Hindus. The media quoted what he had said verbatim. Now, why was that concession given to Paracha and not Sadhvi when the nature of what they said was similar? In fact, Sadhvi had not set up a training camp inside a religious institute, she merely called for self-defence and yet, she was accused of giving a call for genocide.

Now only that – it is an established fact that unilateral violence is unleashed by elements in the Muslim community against the Hindu community. This, by no means, is a controversial statement, rather, an established fact. Every year, there are hundreds of cases of Love jihad, mob violence against Hindus, calls for violence against idolators, forceful conversions and murders in the name of Islam. One can look away if one wishes to, but facts truly don’t care about liberal sensibilities. Given the thousand years of history of Jihad of the Islamists against the Hindu community, and the propensity of the Hindu community to forget their own genocide and still be plural towards the Muslim community, the assumption that Muslims would gather arms for aggression and Hindus would gather arms for self-preservation, is not outlandish. Let us take the example of the Delhi anti-Hindu riots. The chargesheets, video evidence and investigation clearly prove that Muslims were gathering stones, sticks, acid pouches, acid bottles, slings atop their terrace etc to unleash violence against the Hindus and “teach kafirs a lesson”. Any violence that was committed by the Hindus towards the end of the riot was for self-defence. There is no evidence that Hindus were gathering arms for unilateral and initiated aggression against the Muslim community.

We have now established that Sadhvi Pragya did not call for the genocide of Muslims and Liberal journalists, owing to their innate bias against Sadhvi herself and Hindus on the whole, proceeded to spread fake news, the malaise, however, is far deeper than just fake news being spread out of bias.

Historically, Hindus defending themselves have in itself been branded as an act of aggression and we see a continuation of that narrative to this day.

In 1946, the massacre of Hindus in Bengal was rather intricately planned. Jinnah is recalled having said that he will either have India divided or India burnt and that he had given up on Constitutional methods to demand the creation of Pakistan. Jinnah had chosen the 16th of August as Direction Action Day because it was the 18th day of Ramzan, the day when the Battle of Badr was fought and won – a war fought by Prophet Muhammad himself, against the Kaffirs, and is considered to be won by Allah’s divine intervention by Muslims. The battle led to the violent occupation of Mecca. 

On the 16th of August, Calcutta was littered with posters lionising Jinnah and reminding Muslims that they had to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet. It is reported that Syed Muhammad Usman, mayor of Calcutta, had issued a widely circulated leaflet that said: Kafer! Toder dhongsher aar deri nei! Sarbik hotyakando ghotbei! (Infidels! Your end is not far away! You will be massacred!). The aim was to make Bengal ‘land of the pure’ and rid it of the Kaffirs (Hindus). The aim was to wage another Battle of Badr, in which the Muslims would conquer the heathens. 

What followed on the 16th right after the Jumma Namaz is Muslims going on a rampage, beheading Hindus, chopping their limbs off and raping Hindu women. Several women were taken as sex slaves by those who were fighting with the religious fervour of the Battle of Badr. In the Kesoram Cotton Mills at Lichubagan in the Muslim-dominated Metiabruz area, Muslim mobs entered and beheaded over 600 labourers. The Hindus, neutered and asked by Gandhi to die with smile on their face hardly fought back. There was a mass exodus from Bengal that marked millions fleeing because the massacre seemed too brutal to fight against. 

During the Direct Action Day, on the 17th of August after 2 days of Hindus being massacred, Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay rose like a phoenix. Gopal Patha (Patha means ‘lamb’. He was called so because he ran a mutton shop) had already founded the Bharat Jatiya Bahini, an organisation of young men to help fellow citizens during a natural calamity. On the 17th, Gopal Patha turned from a philanthropist to a warrior, ready to defend his people. Throughout the night, Gopal Patha, along with his young men from the Bharat Jayati Bahini worked on a plan on how they could defend Hindus from the Muslim barbarians. The marwaris offered finances, others spent the night making weapons for them. 

Muslim League chief minister of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and the Muslim League goons had decided on the 17th that they were going to take two more days to complete the annihilation of Hindus. But they had not taken into consideration their greatest roadblock. Gopal Patha.

From the 18th to 20th, Gopal Patha and his men put up a brave fight, paying the Muslim League goons back in equal measure, if not more. Historian Sandip Bandopadhyay wrote, “They faced resistance everywhere. Hindu youths counter-attacked with such ferocity that the Muslim League men had to flee. Many were killed. Emboldened by their success in taking on and defeating their Islamist attackers, Hindu youths took the fight to Muslim-majority areas and started killing Islamist men. They did not, however, touch Muslim women and children or the aged and the infirm”. 

By the 19th of August, suddenly, the Muslims started feeling unsafe. Only two days of retribution, of self-defence, and the Muslim League started running with tail between their legs. It was only on the 21st of August when the Muslims had started feeling unsafe because the Hindus dared to defend themselves, did Viceroy’s rule come into action in Bengal. 

Not just the Direct Action Day, even during the Malabar Genocide of Hindus, when the Moplah Muslims went on a rampage against Hindus, killing, beheading, and raping, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi told Hindus that they were being massacred because they perhaps failed to make the Mohammedans feel like their brothers.

Every time Hindus have been massacred, our leaders and our “plural” stalwarts have asked Hindus to die with a smile on their face, and any self-defence by the Hindus have been deemed as a greater sin than the aggression of the Muslims. It was only after the Muslims published two booklets insulting Hindus, did Mahashay Rajpal publish Rangeela Rasool, satirising the Prophet of Islam. Even though Rangeela Rasool was a response to Muslims insulting Hindus, it was Mahashay Rajpal who was condemned by Gandhi and eventually, murdered by the Muslims. A similar trajectory was followed during the Kohat violence and more recently, in the case of Nupur Sharma.

Fact remains that Sadhvi Pragya called for Hindus to ensure they can defend themselves when the barbarians are standing at the door. Any condemnation for a call to self-defence essentially means that the Liberal world wants Hindus to die with a smile on their face and sacrifice their daughters in the pursuit of brotherhood, which overwhelmingly means Hindus accepting their own genocide and persecution as par for the course. The “Liberals” want Hindus to never defend their daughters against the Abduls who pretend to be Mohan before forcing them to convert to Islam, the families that murder Hindu men for being in love with Muslim girls, the Islamists who murder the Kanhaiya Lals because they perceive an insult to their religion as a crime punishable by death and those who want to teach “Kafirs a lesson” – the question is – will the Hindus still accept the Gandhi-Esque guilt-tripping that is now being dished out by the Liberal ecosystem.