Nobody would have objected to some Muslim organisations protesting in Mumbai for the violence in Assam that has sent lakhs of the people in Kokrajhar and other adjoining districts into government aided relief camps. However, the protests in Mumbai that flared up into an attack on the police, on the media and ransacking of shops nearby had clearly a communal origin.

Where was the secular pack, which carries a regular crusade in defence of controversial painter M.F. Husain, when fanatic Muslim mobs were holding Karnataka to ransom? Buckling under pressure, the Karnataka Police has registered cases against Kannada daily Kannada Prabha and Urdu daily Siasat for “hurting religious sentiments” though unidentified goons ransacked the offices of Kannada Prabha and an evening newspaper and threw petrol bombs late on Tuesday night in Mangalore. Can a debate on this issue be considered an insult to Islam?

It’s by now a settled fact that the UPA government, at the instance of the Rajindar Sachar committee, tried to seek a Muslim headcount in the armed forces. The unprecedented opposition though has the government resorting to speaking with a forked tongue now. On the one hand, it denies the entire move while on the other it rationalises the exercise in the name of "secularism". The idea of ‘dividing’ the armed forces on communal lines was inspired by a book, Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India by Omar Khalidi, a professor of Hyderabadi origin who teaches architectural history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Excerpts from the book were part of IUML president G.M. Banatwala’s memorandum to the Sachar committee. Khalidi had also advocated, in an interview with The Times of India, a reorganisation of the districts in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam to create "compact Muslim zones" where their culture and rights could be "safeguarded". In other words, he’s playing ‘Pied Piper’ Allama Iqbal to a future Jinnah (ironically, he even has a Muslim League president by his side). It’s no surprise then that he suggests increasing the Muslim presence in the forces—it stems from the same mindset of Islamist consolidation.