Human Rights Watch, an NGO based in New York, published a dossier (April 30, 2002) about the Gujarat events which caused a sensation and fed a large number of articles in the international press. At that point we jump into the sensational... Those rapes and hackings are said to have started at 3:30 P.M. ... when the house was already on fire. Was the mob waiting for everything to be reduced to cinders to commit its crimes?

Inquiries with the Railway staff and passengers travelling in the Sabarmati Express showed that no quarrel whatsoever took place on the platform between a tea vendor and pilgrims, and no girl was manhandled nor kidnapped. As the Nanavati Report established later, this fictitious report was in fact circulated by the Jamiat-Ulma-E-Hind, the very hand responsible for the carnage. It nevertheless went around the world, exhibited as “the true story.” Aren’t we compelled to conclude that the assailants, in India, are those who dictate what’s “politically correct,” and instruct the media?

The nearly total silence manifests itself in the curiously euphemistic manner in which human rights groups report on the plight of Christians, when they notice that plight at all. For example, Amnesty International’s 2007 report on the human rights situation in Egypt dismisses the suffering of Coptic Christians in a single sentence so filled with euphemism and moral equivalence and so lacking in context that it almost erases the crime it describes... The passive voice seems to be the rule of the day where jihad violence against Christians is concerned. The 2007 Amnesty International report on Indonesia includes this line: “Minority religious groups and church buildings continued to be attacked.” By whom? AI is silent. “In Sulawesi, sporadic religious violence occurred throughout the year.”41 Who is responsible for that violence? AI doesn’t say. Amnesty International seems more concerned about protecting Islam and Islamic groups from being implicated in human rights abuses than about protecting Christians from those abuses.

We read all over about a “genocide of Muslims”. Do we remember a single report on the Hindus who heroically helped save Muslims in their neighbourhood? Was even one family of Hindu victims interviewed following the criminal burning of the Sabarmati Express? One fourth of the dead in the ensuing riots were Hindus. How to classify those 250 victims? Who evoked the dead on the Hindu side? According to reports, Congress Party councillor Taufeeq Khan Pathan and his son Zulfi, notorious gangsters, were allegedly seen leading Muslim rioters. Another such character, Congress member of the Godhra Nagarpalika [municipality], Haji Balal, was said to have had the fire- fighting vehicle sabotaged beforehand... Which newspaper article stated that the most violent events took place following provocations by leaders of this sort? The Union Home Ministry's Annual Report of 2002-03 stated that 40,000 Hindus were in riot relief camps. What made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? To seek protection from whom? Why was it necessary if they were the main aggressors? More than the barbaric event itself, it is the insensitivity of the Indian “elite” and of the media that infuriated the Gujaratis. Those accused of terrorism often receive political support, are benevolently portrayed by the media, and a host of “human rights” organisations are always on hand to fight for them. But those victims whose lives are cut down for no reason, are they not “human” enough to get some rights too?

Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of international agencies such as World Bank, and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered, and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..'

This “testimony” from India is what fed countless self-styled human rights organizations and intellectuals in India and in the West. They drank in Setalvad’s words and regurgitated them as articles and “reports” with a plethora of gory details.

The Congress made an attempt to defame the entire country in the name of Hindu terror. This is a country where we feed even ants that bite us. They created a false case and booked sadhus and sadhvis. I want to ask: everyone has been acquitted in the Samjhauta case. The court has said that there is no evidence. Shouldn’t The Indian Express ask for accountability of the real accused being left out? Look how they compromised national security for their vote bank politics. CBI (agencies) had arrested them. Where are they? Isn’t it an issue for the country? Those who were caught, even American agencies had said that it was a Lashkar act, Indian agencies certified it. But to certify Hindu terror, saffron terror, you created false cases. Case after case collapsed in courts. But the media is sitting silent. Seculars are silent. The Indian Express is also silent. Why are you silent? At least you should ask about those accused. I think this is a big issue that needs to be in public debate.

If you had been in India in late 1998-early 1999, and the English-language "national" newspapers had been your source of information about what was going on, you would have concluded that an extensive, well coordinated pogrom was on, that maniacal Hindu groups were going round raping nuns, attacking missionaries, burning down churches. (p 7)

But within days, the narrative started getting manipulated as though an invisible hand was guiding it in the direction of targeting Narendra Modi as the evil genius who personally masterminded the massacre. This line of argument became so aggressive and entrenched that when in 2010, the SIT report did not fall in line with those targeting Modi, SIT members came in for vicious personal attack and slander. They were accused of having been bought over by Narendra Modi. Teesta & Co. launched a full-fledged campaign for disbanding the SIT and replacing it with a fresh inquiry. It is worth asking why the SIT report and various court orders that came before and after the SIT clearing Modi’s name have not altered the tone or tenor of the hate campaign carried out by leading journalists, NGO activists, and jet-setting academics. Why do journalists keep flinging the same set of questions to Modi and repeating the same charges ad nauseam totally ignoring the outcomes of court cases and the SIT report?

It’s true. This violence was unexpected. Nobody expected it. There is victory and defeat in elections, but the way violence started right from the counting centers has never been seen before. To date, this has not been seen anywhere in India. The BJP workers or even the organization were not prepared for this level of violence, this allegation is absolutely true.
There have been attacks on our workers. Close to 50,000 workers had to be homeless. Close to 20 people were murdered. During all this, our organization could not help its workers in the slightest.

They tried to shut me up by painting me as a part of the Hindutva campaign. But it was never about Hindutva. It’s neither about freedom of speech or intolerance. This is a tactic employed to protect their castles. They confuse the issue by bringing in lots of counter news and views. They quote laws. They try to make it look like an anti-RSS, anti-BJP issue. This isn’t about any of the above. It’s about a war against India. In 2010, there was an intelligence report that terror groups were making inroads in Indian universities. Everyone ignored it exactly like when intelligence said Ishrat Jahan was a suicide bomber. They believe in intelligence reports only when it suits them. This is India’s real threat.

Somehow all this responsibility goes for a toss if a Muslim couple were to claim something similar. Recall how allegations of many Muslim men who claimed that they were beaten up and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ were reported without the mainstream media waiting for verification or confirmation from the police. The bulk of such cases, incidentally reported after Modi won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, was found to be baseless or downright fake after the police carried out interrogations and investigations; yet reporting on such lines continued unabated.

Shielding the perpetrators and attacking the victims: along with Hindu Revivalists, the neutral observer must raise the question why Hindus are getting such vicious treatment in the world media.

I know that the evidence demanded by me does not exist. It is a Big Lie being spread by Hindu-baiters. Hindus have never done what they are being accused of. My only point in mentioning the incident is that even honest people can become victims of hostile propaganda which is not countered in good time.