Book review: Who killed Karkare by S.M. Mushrif
Short review: What a dumbass!
Full review:
Lately a number of claims have been made about how RSS has come to dominate media and security organizations. The claim about media dominance is rather surprising since RSS itself has been complaining for a long time that the Indian media is liberal. I tend to agree with RSS here since the claim about liberal media is true about most of the world and not just India.
There is also a rise in attempts to single out Brahmin community in the name of Shahu and Phule. Typically these attacks mention “Brahminism” instead of Hinduism.
Another interesting fact is the rise in the number of claims that (a) historically Hindu and Muslims have been living peacefully in India. (b) It is the Brahmins who helped Muslim rulers to rule India. (c) There were hardly any riots between these two communities. (d) All recent acts of terrorism have been orchestrated by RSS.
Though these claims came from various minority elements, there is enough similarity in the proof (*sic*) offered. I was puzzled about what this common source might be and finally it seems I have stumbled across one: “Who killed Karkare” by S.M. Mushrif is the origin.
Before going into the review of this book, let me very briefly touch upon the Hindu-Muslim issue in India. The unfortunate fact is that politicians from both sides of the divide have always ended up encouraging the extremists and punishing the moderates. Unfortunately Mahatma Gandhi is also guilty of this charge. His support for Khilaphat movement was rather surprising considering the fact that the main aim of the movement was to crush the democracy and bring back the state rule under Islamic law.
There have been a number of such examples. For e.g. as a result of Shah Bano case Muslim woman in India lost the right to alimony. This was a victory of religion over secularism.
Another interesting dimension to this problem is the partition of India in 1947. A large group of professional Muslims migrated to Pakistan during this period. This meant that the Muslim community in India lost a lot of professional leadership during this period.
On the other hand, since government was encouraging extremist Muslims, normal Hindu is getting disillusioned and moving over to the extremist organizations like RSS that have started becoming more and more militant as the years passed.
As if this is not enough, the Gujrath riots facilitated by Narendra Modi have pushed moderates Muslims towards extremists as the riots proved that there is safety in numbers. This particular riot has been extremely painful as it has emboldened Hindu extremists and drove ordinary Muslims in the clutches of religious leaders.
If the blame needs to be apportioned then a significant portion would go to the Muslim community in India. For whatever reason, the community is not able to nurture any kind of a democratic/non-religious movement for long.
Let us come back to the book with this information in mind:
The only reason why I decided to read this book was because the author is Former I.G. Police. After reading this book now I know why the government machinery in India so badly screwed up. How can it not be if a person with such a low caliber can become I.G.?
The book is about 300 pages long of which only 50 odd pages are about Karkare. Rest of the pages is filled with author’s fantastic and ridiculous attempts to rewrite history. This miserable idiot even tries to equate himself with Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. He daydreams that his book is going to be as influential as ‘Riddles of Hinduism’.
Let is now look at a sample of fantastic claims made in this book. I am picking these at random but you will find similar claims on almost every page in the book.
(a) The Mumbai blast of 1993 was the handiwork of a gang of Muslim criminals. This was not an act of terrorism. (I really wonder what is authors definition of terrorism)
(b) Author complains that Muslims were automatically being blamed for every blast in India. (Hello! This is because Muslims were behind almost every blast in India. Once Hindu organizations were found behind some of the blasts, police now are more circumspect)
(c) The creditability of ATS hit rock bottom after Mumbai crime branch claimed that IM (Indian Mujahideen was behind the bomb blast. (Two page of discussion follows after this statement and the only thing I could understand was that the accused were part of a different terrorist outfit. Big deal!)
(d) No thorough enquiry was made in a complaint made by a woman lecturer in Ahmednagar who had called up Union Home Ministry and informed them that she knew a 7/11 terrorist……They interrogated her brother and father and came to conclusion the lady made the complaint in order to teach Khanderao a lesson for not marrying her as promised. (Police closed this part of the investigation. The author does not agree as he feels police should have wasted time in following up this obvious act of insanity by the woman. Author offers this as a proof that IB does not investigate properly. My only reaction to this is that thank god this person is retired from service.)
(e) Logically how things could have moved after the bomb blast is anybody’s guess. The district administration would have informed their bosses in Mumbai…and the Brahminist leaders would have got in touch with their people in the IB. By the time the government took a decision, the IB would have communicated to the state government… (It is all would, could, may be. Not an iota of evidence here. This particular pattern is repeated throughout the book. I think the author has smoked to much of high quality Marijuana at the time of writing this book)
The book has much more of these fantastic claims. Let me end this review here by mentioning the weirdest of the claims.
The Mumbai attack was the handiwork of RSS who orchestrated the attacks with the help of some organization in Pakistan.
Just when you thought you heard everything this dumbass has actually tried to prove this claim. Now you would think that he has some facts to support this outlandish claim. Right? Here is what he says. “I shall analyse only that part of the attack mainly on newpaper reports”.
Get it? This guy does not have any facts to offer. He is trying to prove his conspiracy theory based on discrepancies in the newspaper reports.
But wait there is more. He has a ready reason for why Kasab was left alive by Brahminist elements who organized the attacks. This is a complicated discussion and involved crunching a lot of facts for e.g. most of the CC TV cameras in the train station were not working. This was done at the behest of Brahminical elements. Someone needs to kick this guy’s ass up and down every government establishment in India. Where do such CCTV camera’s work apart from the 1st month that they were installed. How could they? With such a caliber of government officials.
Anyway, don’t bother wasting your money to buy this book. If someone starts quoting from this book then make it point to ask them whether they have really read this fictional novel.
What a dumbass!
