| On July 5, 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited members of the Indian women’s press corps to his residence for an interaction over high tea. He told the journalists that he had spent a sleepless night after watching on television Mohammed Haneef’s mother express her agony at the arrest of her son in Brisbane in connection with the Glassgow airport bombing. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was the first to go after the Prime Minister, wanting to know if he had ever spent a sleepless night over the death of a jawan or the victims of a terror attack. Mr. Modi’s rejoinder suddenly made it politically correct for many who strut around as liberals and secularists to display their prejudices vis-à-vis Muslims. The google-savvy ones dug up the Prime Minister remark in July 2005 that “ I take pride in the fact that although we have 150 million Muslims in our country as citizens, not one has been found to have joined the ranks of the Al Queda or participated in the activities of Taliban”. |