A grand total of 80 people died in the serial blasts in Jaipur last Tuesday. A grand total of 134 people have died (so far) in the hooch tragedy in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the weekend. If you take Bangalore and Kolar together, the toll stands at 75.
How do we react to both?
A terror attack sends the nation into a furious spell of breast-beating and finger-pointing. Sketches of the culprits, debates on POTA. Pakistan or Bangladesh? OB vans roll in, correspondents file tear-jerkers. NRIs and other pseudo-patriots break into a sweat over “minority appeasement”. Vasundhara Raje finds the time to Walk the Talk. Compensation of Rs 5 lakh.
Get ready for a candle-light vigil.
A hooch tragedy is just the bad news before the break at dinner time. The hospitals are only slightly better than the slums the victims live/d in. No stories of kids cruelly orphaned by the killer brew. Politicians and officials play a game they have played before—hide and “speak”—with alacrity. Sonia Gandhi won’t be making a visit. Rs 10,000 in compensation.
Is there a preferred way to die, post-9/11?
Does death not count if it isn’t due to terrorism?
If we can’t stop a homegrown hooch tragedy, you bet we will stop international terrorism.
Photograph: A panoramic shot of pristine D.G. Halli, where most of the victims, hailed from (Karnataka Photo News)
Also read: Does not count if it isn’t due to terrorism-Part I?
hmmmmm…. I am not sure. But may be because in our society we still think consuming alcohol is sin, compared to say west where it is normal ??
Where as those who died in terrorist incidents get more sympathy because of general feeling that it is not their fault.
Let me see what others think.
Neck-putting-out-time
We think people who die in such “incidents” are no better than those who OD on drugs or those who overspeed in cars and die.
Sort of like they invited this on their head.
Those who don’t drink, or maybe drink Mallya’s brew aren’t likely to suffer the same fate anyway, so there is distance to critically evaluate it from a distance and blame the victim.
Whereas terrorism is can happen to normal people in normal places. Any place, anywhere is vulnerable to terror and guess what, it could happen to us!
This is the dumbest one I have come across from terror-apologist & kangressi- leaning media outlet.
Are nuts or what. dont you understand even clear differences. People die of alcohol for their own choice, government can do nothing other than awareness campaign.
No one dies in terror attack by choice, people are killed. First is more akin to suicide, other is ruthless killing. Also people who dont drink alcohol will not be terrified here, but every common man life is affected with terrorism. Its grave threat to national security. Please atleast stop batting for congress in such pervert ways.
what do you mean by “..NRIs and other pseudo-patriots…”? This is a sweeping generalisation! Baad!
you already got good answers. you may want to play down the repeated terror attacks under your favourite congress party, but this is stooping too low even for you.
btw, did you forget that karnataka is presently under *congress* rule (aka preisdent’s rule with a pliant governor)? and the other state, TN that was affected too, is under a *staunch ally of congress*? so what were those governments doing?
So if those victims are living in a shanty town whose fault is that _ out of about 50 years of karnataka, you had some 40 years of a very secular party ruling over you. That picture will look panoramic and pristine to you if you count the secular beans.
QED.
What a tragedy. Kids lost their parents, family lost their Bread winners…
… And the blame game begins. And …We have 2 major political partiers in mud slinging match… Wow. What responsible leaders Karnataka has….
What the hell are you smoking anyway?
Like f*** they are the same. A terror attack is a MURDER while death due to hooch is SUICIDE…Get this dumb heads!
I also want to point out the news reports circulating in CNN-IBN… from last two days the “breaking news” is a murder in noida…..no updates on the recent blasts… WTF is the problem with media? Why are you downplaying the terror attacks? Tomorrow the whole country will be nuked (most probably by china) but you guys will carry on with a murder in noida or a drunken tragedy or worse, what did Akshay kumar say to Katrina kaif….
Shame on you media!
PS At the same time, my sympathies ARE with those killed due to hooch tragedy.. Just that I think it was self-invited.
Like f*** we didn’t know that the hooch victims bought their death and the terror victims walked into it!
Some of the responses suggest that terrorism is injuring even those not present at the site of the incidents. In fact, it seems to have done such serious damage between our ears (as a result of hearing the same stuck record perhaps) that we can so blithely treat the hooch victims as if they were flies.
And where does secularism, Congress etc come into all this when it is human lives we are debating?
If terror attacks become as common as hooch deaths, people with stop bothering about that too.
yeah sure, PK. but then there sure is a distinction between the two?
one is a governance problem and another a law and order problem perhaps?
surely the individual unallied immoral hooch trader is different from the well networked scheming murderers?
i can eliminate one variable in my life if i donot drink hooch. but what about terror? in all seriousness what had people of RJ done? if they can be subject to attacks, why not people of KA?
so what is the grievance of these terrorists against the people of RJ?
Cannot help comparing to the mourning in china for the earthquake victims. Here we are taking the best oppurtunity to blame while its heart rending to see the chinese as a nation come together to mourn their lost country men.
@ PK aka poor kannaDiga,
cant you make out the simple difference between the two? If you are so hell bent on just discussing the lost lives, why did people like you shout against Modi after Gujarat killings?
Now coming to the current issue, if India is struck by terror in any of its part, rest other parts can also be equally prone to terror. But of Karnataka is affected by hooch tragedy, its only Karnataka, becoz its the local affairs and terror is national, since it is being perpetrated by a large network, mostly foreign.
And here comes into picture the congress and its policies and people like you.
Totally meaningless. The author is comparing the two events just for the sake of comparision. Probably, a good thought for “secular Intellectuals” and ‘secular politicians” to exploit the idea to cover-up the terrorism.
If terror-apologists like churmuri.com will not stop doing your traitorgiri in this country, they are bound to create another frankstein in nation which will wipe such people off.
@ pragmatic
“why did people like you shout against Modi after Gujarat killings?”
How are you so sure, my friend?
Are you a mind reader? Are you my mother?
Sure, anonymity provides you a nice disguise to hide your dark, wet fantasies, but you (and to use your own terminology, you and your ilk) will have to do better than brand everybody who you think is on the other side. Cogent argument is much appreciated. Death is the great leveller if you didn’t get the office memo.
How can the leaders mourn the hooch tragedy when the hooch was their election present?
They become rich by selling it, then get vote by giving it free for sometime.
Sort of double edged benefit.
I totally agree with churumuri.com’s arguments that a hooch tragedy or a terror attack should be seen on the same plain as in both cases human lives are lost.
The secular patriots, who have criticised you for being pro-Congress, have conveniently ignored your reference to Sonia’s failure to visit sites of hooch tragedy.
The secular patriots, who have been brainwashed by BJP’s “minority appeasement” slogan, find an axe to grind against the Muslims by raising the bogey of terrorism.
In hooch tragedies, they are unable to point an accusing finger at “jehadi” forces. How can they be moved by such hooch tragedies when several hapless Muslim families with small innocent children have lost their sole breadwinner.
Hooch tragedies and farmers’s suicides are just as bad as terror attacks. It is imbecile on one’s part to say that hooch tragedies are akin to suicide. Would the victims have drank the deadly brew had they known that it would kill them? So much for their saffron-tinted vision.
I meant pseudo patriots and not secular patriots in my second para of the post.
Brother,
Where are javed akthar’s and Teesta setalvads ? Human beings are same be it Gujrat or Tn or Karnataka
I was shocked by a few responses to the write-up. I don’t understand how anyone can call death due to hooch a suicide! For god sake hold your tongue. None of the 150 odd people consumed hooch with an intention to die. Most of them took liquor served or sold on the fateful day just like on any other day.
After arrack is banned in Karnataka poor, particularly those earn their livelihood by hard manual labour have lost source of ‘kick’ which offers them relief and get ready for the next-day’s work. Obviously they are not in a position to go for high price liquor. If somebody is offering a drink branded as liquor at a cheaper rate they go for it.
It is the state government which banned arrack should take the blame. if they were so concerned about public health, the govt should have banned sale of all forms of alcohol.
Consuming arrack or alcohol has been there in practice for ages. Wiping it out at one-go is simply impossible. One should view at the issue at a larger perspective. Reducing the whole incident into a mass suicide shows how a man can remain a cynic.
We are missing the most important point here. Terrorism is caused by the warped mind either for some ideological reasoning (naxalism) or jihadi element (religious teaching) and purely a product of misguided minds of some clever “social entrepreuneur”. But the hooch tragedy which is equally tragic is because of several factors. Some of them are man’s greed to make quick bucks, poverty of those who took that cheap hooch (none of us will partake such things), etc. Just like 80 people died in this, if we keep statistics of those who die every day in slums of India or some forgotten villages of India, there are thosunds dieing because of high food prices, or lack of kerosene (these are slow deaths and not sudden). Do any one even care to report on them? Forget about compensating them.
It is easy to eliminate jihadi killings and it is necessary also. So also naxal influenced killings. It is for that reason the society gets upset when those inncocent people die for the warped ideas of some leaders. But when poverty kills thousands every day, it is not even a news item since the political leaders are supposedly every day working “hard” to reduce such deaths.
“It is easy to eliminate jihadi killings and it is necessary also.”
try selling this to BUSH :)
Dear Dr. BVS,
“But when poverty kills thousands every day, it is not even a news item’
Take care!!
The Hindu rural affairs editor Mr. P. Sainath said something like this about farmers suicide in one of his articles in The Hindu and he was almost verbally lynched in these pages of Churumuri.
So, I don’t thing those verbal gladiators will be any lenient towards you.
Stupid write up. No connection between the two. If people want to go and f**k with their life by drinking hooch let them go ahead. The biggest tragedy is Government giving compensation from tax payers’ money. (which is mine although million time fractionally)
It clearly depends whether the people consuming hooch knew they were risking their lives. If the alcohol was sold to them on the premise that it was safe, then the people who sold it are liable for the deaths and may be prosecuted as a murderer just as a terrorist may. If not, then not.
Thanks for this article.
By itself the writeup didnt seem interesting because it linked up two separate things. But the reactions have made it interesting.
Especially ones vehemently trying to go all out in arguing how death by hooch was the victims own fault while death by terrorism was not (almost making the victims martyrs). As if the hooch brewed and served itself to the poor folk and hence it doesnt matter if they thought what they were drinking was just alcohol. As opposed to their hooch, our alcohol is protected to some extent from adulteration by government control.
What enrages me (a reference to current election times) even more is that some parties had made assurances to the extent that they would lift existing the ban on toddy if elected…
A foolish and presumptuous article. The Jaipur blast is an attack on the sovereignty of the country and is an undeclared war on India as the perpetuators of the crime negate our right to live honourably as free citizens. They reject our concept of a united nation and want nothing short of dismemberment of India. To equate terrorism with hooch tragedy does not even make for a good copy. Death by any means is a tragedy for the families concerned. But when the unknown (?) enemy strikes and wreaks havoc on unsuspecting citizens for political, ideological or religious reasons, the gravity of the event transcends State boundaries unlike hooch tragedy because it concerns our future and death can come suddenly.
Jaipur is far away in the distant north and hence some of you can take comfort in the distance and indulge in the luxury of such wrapped thinking. But it could be your neighbourhood in Mangalore, Bangalore. Hubli or Mysore next on the list of such mass killings. Hence the reaction to death by terrorism is different from death due to alcohol consumption. So is the newspapers coverage of one or two deaths in Kashmir which merits a front page coverage while an accident that may kill dozens in Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra will be confined to local pages.
Everyone knows drinking is bad for health. Yet, people drink on their free will because not every sip of drink kills. But it is not the same with a bomb lurking around the corner. People simply do not walk into it knowingly. The bomb is meant to kill. But the hooch was not meant to kill, it was meant for consumption and induce intoxication just as soma and sura were consumed since the Vedic days. If it did kill, it was because something went terribly wrong during its concoction, distillation or during fermentation and even the seller would be unaware of it.
But the manufacturers of dirty and crude bombs know what it is meant for. They select the target and blow it up after thorough planning. That is their intention: to kill people in hundreds and create terror. Surely a bomb is not meant to spread joy.
So to see both the events on the same plain !!! Heights of stupidity. But to give it a political colour, dub those concerned about terrorism as BJPwallahs is being highly irresponsible and immature.
My dear Poster,
I need not further cast aspersions of your writings as the above comments are fitting enough.
You are further exposed in your post that the tears you have shed for the hooch victims are of crocodile variety, like your political masters. For example the caption in your photograph says that the scene is from ‘D.G. Halli’ (emphasis mine). In fact it is D.J. Halli, meaning Devara Jeevana Halli. Please do not exploit hooch tragedies and villagers for your political scores. Treat them with respect.
‘
Coming back to the Terrorist bomb blasts, why don’t we outsource terrorism investigations to the Brits or Americans, like they outsource the IT projects to us. If we continue to investigate such incidents with our ineffective police force, who are otherwise involved in it by allowing RDX and other materials to be freely transported for a personal fee, we can never solve a single case of terrorism as history has shown it. The police force has become so ineffectual and their investigations have become so shoddy, as their callous investigations into a recent murder of an young girl and a servant show. The blokes after being invited to the scene of the crime, came and saw the murdered girl and went back, without looking for crucial evidence all around the house. On the terrace there was a dead body of servant laying unnoticed by them who it seems was killed at the same time as the girl. So the perverted jokers assumed that the girl was killed by the missing servant (whose dead body was laying all the time on the roof of that house) and even gave press statements in front of TV cameras. Can we rely on such jokers to be entrusted with terrorism investigations? They are at the best fit for traffic management and VIP ‘seva’.
So we need to raise a new separate crime investigation department with educated and trained individuals, without deputation from any existing police force. Until then outsource all terror crime investigations to Brits or Americans, who will report to none other than CJI.