ATTACK ON OUTLOOK MAGAZINE BY FASCIST SHIV SANIKS CONDEMNED
Statement of Dr John Dayal,
Member, National Integration Council, Government of India and President of the All India Catholic Union (Abridged)
“The Shiv Sena goons, like their spiritual brothers in the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Andhra, and the Bajrang Dal and the RSS elsewhere in India, remind us that sixty years after Independence, India has not been able to exorcise the demons that divided brothers in Partition, and which continue to divide people today. They have been cause of bloodshed much greater than in any War with an enemy nation, or even a minor epidemic. The attack on the Mumbai offices of Outlook magazine – one of the rare journals in the country to have consistently defied and challenged the forces of communalism, obscurantism and anarchy in the short years of its founding – is but a shade different from the unrepentant MIM attack on Bangladeshi exiled woman writer Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad Press Club or the many attacks on Pastors and Nuns in various parts of the country. .. it is for the Central and State governments to act, and to act fast. Governments’ conscience will be clear, and their hands strengthened, if they show courage to prosecute the attackers of Outlook, who indeed are no other than the killers of Muslims in Mumbai of 1993, and whose kin have on their hands the blood of innocent children and women of all communities, and particularly those of religious minorities.
I express my solidarity with Editors Vinod Mehta and Alok Mehta, with their journalists and staff, and with the ethos of the Outlook Magazine.”