I won’t say that I was immediately attracted towards these handles and initiatives, but they gradually exposed me to a counter-set of views, many of … - Rahul Roushan

Yes, there were writers like Sita Ram Goel who had written cogently about Islamic imperialism and Muslim separatism back in the 1980s and 90s itself, but I didn’t even know they existed. IIMC had a library, like any other educational institute, but I can hardly recall books by such authors being kept there. There were a couple of books by Arun Shourie though, possibly because Shourie was a known and influential journalist and a cabinet minister at that time. Once, when I picked up a book by Shourie in the IIMC library, a classmate of mine sarcastically congratulated me for picking up a book of an ‘intellectual’.

But apart from the violence, what triggered the Sanghi in me during those days was an article by Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in The Indian Express, barely a week after the rioting at Azad Maidan ... The hypocrisy was staggering. Setalvad and her husband were virtually arguing that the police did the right thing by letting the Muslims vent out their anger against perceived injustices. Well, that’s exactly what they accused Modi of saying and doing — that he asked the police in Gujarat to let the Hindus vent out their anger over the Godhra train carnage.

Even though I had followed many ‘Internet Hindus’ on Twitter, it didn’t really turn me into one. The ‘credit’ for triggering the Hindu in me actually goes to the mainstream media and its approach towards two incidents in 2012, both of which were related.