Hate Modi but what other option do Muslims in India have?

Editor’s note: This is a reader comment we received on the article Hate not fear: How Muslims view Narendra Modi . The comment has been edited for grammar. By ShockTreatment The loss of even one innocent life is strongly condemnable and I do agree that many innocent Muslims tragically lost their lives in 2002. The Gujarat riots are a blot on India’s history. But I have never been able to fathom what makes the Gujarat riots so different from the hundreds that India has seen over the past decades. The Sikh genocide of 1984 and Nellie Massacre of 1983 were far, far worse because they were one-sided pogroms. Don’t they bring out the same revulsion as 2002 because they happened some 20 years before the 2002 riots? Or are Muslims okay with the Congress because the victims of 1984 were not Muslims? What about the 1969 Gujarat riots and the 1989 Bhagalpur violence, both in Congress ruled states? [caption id=“attachment_1428727” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Modi in this file photo. AFP[/caption] The second question that I want to ask, at the risk of sounding extremely insensitive, is this - what reaction did the Muslims and others expect after 58 people, including women and children, were torched at Godhra? All is forgiven, let’s get back to business? Modi may or may not have aided and abetted the 2002 riots. But to expect symbolic gestures from him is just that - symbolic. Sure, hate him, but do realise that the lot of Muslims in India has not improved too much under the so-called secularists. Maybe, just maybe, Modi may do a lot better for the community than what the other parties - at the centre and in the states - have done over the past 66 years. The saner Muslims would have already realised that.