While reading news paper few days back, I came across a very interesting piece of news lying low between the mundane news on not so important local news page. The news was, "*Members of the Muslim community in Pune showed the way to an amicable resolution of a potentially sensitive situation by volunteering to demolish part of the two-century-old 'Manusha' mosque at Nana Peth to facilitate road-widening and development work being undertaken by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Against this, the PMC has agreed to grant additional floor space index to the community to facilitate vertical development of the remaining portion of the mosque. As many as 50 Muslim youths volunteered to participate in the work to bringing down the front portion of the mosque soon after the morning namaz."
After reading this news I became ecstatic but my initial euphoria fizzled out soon and gave way to sense of pity for the Members of the Muslim community. Those innocent people don't know that they have just missed the lifetime opportunity of becoming national celebrity (may be international) overnight by working for peace and development. Who the hell does talk about Peace and Development! Instead of co-operating with PMC they should have released fatwa against PMC and people associated with development work for thinking and bringing the proposal of destroying the mosque. Our Muslim brothers in Pune should have protested in violent manner and should have gone on records with the claim that it was ploy of majority community to bulldoze the sacred Mosque in the disguise of development and they will not tolerate such advance. What a perfect feed it would have been for our national media? But they gave it all away just in the name of peace and development, poor people! In the end they manage to get into local news page.
I don't know about you but for me it's a perfect example of our negative mindset and our negative media. We never care for positive things around us and same is the media. After all later is the by product of former. Our media is ever ready to spread the venom exhaled by few unscrupulous people in the name of caste, creed, region, race and god knows what and we also respond to that venom by inhaling it. I guess its high time that we should resist such venom so that media will cease to spread it and one day we will get more news like mentioned above from the same media not on local news page but on front page.
After reading this news I became ecstatic but my initial euphoria fizzled out soon and gave way to sense of pity for the Members of the Muslim community. Those innocent people don't know that they have just missed the lifetime opportunity of becoming national celebrity (may be international) overnight by working for peace and development. Who the hell does talk about Peace and Development! Instead of co-operating with PMC they should have released fatwa against PMC and people associated with development work for thinking and bringing the proposal of destroying the mosque. Our Muslim brothers in Pune should have protested in violent manner and should have gone on records with the claim that it was ploy of majority community to bulldoze the sacred Mosque in the disguise of development and they will not tolerate such advance. What a perfect feed it would have been for our national media? But they gave it all away just in the name of peace and development, poor people! In the end they manage to get into local news page.
I don't know about you but for me it's a perfect example of our negative mindset and our negative media. We never care for positive things around us and same is the media. After all later is the by product of former. Our media is ever ready to spread the venom exhaled by few unscrupulous people in the name of caste, creed, region, race and god knows what and we also respond to that venom by inhaling it. I guess its high time that we should resist such venom so that media will cease to spread it and one day we will get more news like mentioned above from the same media not on local news page but on front page.
* The source of news is: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Muslims_help_raze_part_of_mosque/articleshow/2831918.cms
