CONDOLENCES, #PAKISTAN

You have just lost fifty more innocent fellow-citizens in the dastardly blast in a #Lahore Park. Obviously many more lie injured, some permanently disabled, many more permanently scarred. Thousands must live in perpetual sadness of these gruesome memories.

I offer my profound condolences and wish for the bereaved to receive fortitude to face this terrible loss. The sadness is fully shared by me, and almost certainly by the members of FB Groups I promoted, and by most of my fellow-Indians.

Equally, we share in the anger against the barbarians who did this to you. They have been doing these ghastly, mindless, purposeless killings in Pak, in India, in Europe and Africa. They have been brutally snatching fathers, sons, husbands, daughters, mothers, bread-winners, employers, teachers, statesmen.. with frightening regularity, from families that never did any harm to them, or to their creed or to their nation.

'They' includes fanatics of all hues. We have our share in India. Europe has some of its own. But of immediate and largest concern is the breed that your rulers produced, nurtured strategically and now find themselves at their mercy.

We know how Gen Zia empowered these illiterate bigots to unleash their lethal power to wreak uncontrollable havoc against the liberal and progressive people. In due time they ate the very hands that fed them. Their murderous influence has outreached the farthest expanse of goodwill and charity. AlQaeda, IS, BokoHaram.. all their cousins, together, have caused irreparable harm to Islam - and to the cause of Muslims world-wide. They have shaken the foundation of modern civilization based on the premise that men do not harm men needlessly. They have taken away the quintessential element of security form the civilized world. They have managed to introduce anarchy in democracies.

Sadly we seem to be repeating this deadly patronage of the bigots in our midst, ourselves in India. Wish us better.

In this hour of mourning we stand by you and offer to you our fullest support in getting rid of these blood-thirsty bigots, and in erasing all mechanisms and facilitations that create and nurture them. We hug and embrace you and urge you, when you recover from your current sorrow, to convey to your unaffected fellow citizens the dangers of tolerating these intolerant barbarians.