Communal rage in secular India

COMMUNAL RAGEIN SECULAR INDIA
Why did the torching of S8 kar sevaks in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra take
place? It was undoubtedly the work of some demented persons, insensitive to
its possible aftermath. Worse, how did genocide on such a brutal scale in most
parts of Gujarat occur? And that too in a state which gave birth to Gandhi and
nurtured him! People all over the world continue to wonder: Have human
relations in a country known for its broad humanism fallen so low? Why is it that
Hindus and Muslims who lived together for more than a thousand years in peace
have in begun to hate one other? Never before were women and children burnt
and butchered in such a bestial manner. The miscreants incited by communal
Hindus belonging to different castes and sub-castes and cutting across the rich an
the poor, unleashed such a terrible reign of murder, rape and loot that history
itself stood aghast at what it was forced to record.
Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, a scholar of international repute, who has spent more
than 50 years of his life trying to bring Hindus and Muslims together, delves deep
into the past and present of the relationship between the two
communities to discover what went wrong that brought about such
conflagration of hatred and bloodshed. He also looks at the future with diffidence
but hope. Prof. Amartya Sen of Cambridge University, one of the greatest thinkers of
Our time, who was awarded the Nobel Price for Economics in 1998, has written
the Foreword to the book. He warns that unless the communal virus which seems
to have overtaken India in such a horrendous manifestation is not
destroyed, it will destroy India itself .