It’s not Kashmiris vs Tamils

What the Government did to Afzal Guru was shameful. It doesn’t mean that we have to continue to repeat the same shameful act.

This is what I had posted when Afzal Guru was hanged secretively. I know many many others in Tamilnadu (arguably more than anywhere else in India, outside Kashmir) who had expressed similar sentiments, while the English channels were spewing venom – then as now. It is nauseating to see the same news anchors now pitting Kashmiris vs Tamils, with complete disregard for the consistent humanitarian stance of many Tamils. Along with the undeniable Tamil sentiments, this humanitarian stance has also played a major part in creating the political compulsion, if any, for the Tamilnadu government. I should never use this word against anyone – but if ever the much misused word, anti-national, can be applied, it is for these anchors for playing such a blatantly divisive role.

And please, words like going-scot-free don’t stick easily on the shoulders of convicts who have spent 23 years in prison, with the death-threat looming all the time, and as one of them poignantly put it in a poem – without ever seeing the moon. They have, knowingly or unknowingly, played a part in the assassination of a former Prime Minister, but death sentence is too severe for any act of crime and 23 years in prison is a long enough punishment.