Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, should have known that there are different standards of free speech in the Western World.
If you wish to demonise Muslims or make objectionable caricatures, you will have the free speech advocates firmly standing behind you and calling it your birth right to ridicule Muslims.
But if you 'dare' suggest that Zionists (I am not saying Jews) are exploiting Holocaust, you are in for trouble. In his essay published in the Washington Post, Gandhi wrote that "Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but also the whole world to regret...."
He further wrote that the future of Jewish identity appears bleak as Israel doesn't want to befriend any nation rather wishes to live by dominating others. Now that was enough for Zionists to cry foul.
So much hue and cry was raised that Gandhi was made to resign from the MK Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, an institute which he founded 17 years ago. So you can't even dare ask Zionists to introspect.
Though I don't like to write much about Israel and Jews (already Urdu papers have spent tonnes of ink and given the penchant among many of us to dub any thing as a Jewish Conspiracy), such incidents are surely unsettling.
Strangely, holocaust remains a holy cow. Germany persecuted Jews. Before them for centuries Britain, France and other countries persecuted them. In many countries they were made to wear distinguishing clothes or marks and were blamed for plague and every epidemic.
The Muslim countries like Turkey and Ethiopia treated Jews better and opened their doors to them. But Europe, in one master-stroke shed its collective guilt by settling the Jews amid Muslim populace, and shifting the battlefield.
Now Jews, a practical race, discovered that Muslims have to be their enemies, and forgot the whole experience of Inquisition. Let us for a moment forget all the historical burden. And wonder what makes the mention of Holocaust such a big crime?
On this blog two years back I had written a similar post when historian David Irving was jailed for denying Holocaust. Ahmedinejad makes the West uncomfortable because he refuses to bear the burden of this strange moral guilt of the Western world.
Of course, Holocaust was bad, a terrible phase. But why should the entire Jewry, all the time, expect the world to be sorry for Hitler's deeds. When Indian Jews, African Jews and Jews in other countries never had a holocaust experience, why should they also expect this.
And when someone like Arun Gandhi says that openly, he is labelled anti-Semite! It's also hounding the 'other'. No lessons from holocaust. It's a Hitlerian thinking. You drop bombs on others in the name of peace. And if somebody dares to suggest, he is called names.
That's unbecoming of the race that gave the world, Spinoza and Einstein. What about Freedom of Speech!