Why is it that Indians always blame their problems on things intangible - the west, provocation, the ISI, and so on? In his article, “Slaughter in the Name of God,” which appeared in a March edition of the Washington Post, Salman Rushdie blames the horrific mass murders in Gujarat on the ultimate intangible scapegoat - God.

Rushdie gives a gut-wrenching account of how children are brutalized in India, including those killed in the Godhra train attack. He expresses his own feelings of anger and disgust about that and the following riots. He gives political explanation and puts the blame squarely on the Indian government, the police, and the religious extremists. He even blasts Nobel author Naipaul for his extremist views. But while all this is commendable, Rushdie minimizes the tragedy by saying that India is just letting off a little crazy religious steam and ends by saying that “The problem’s name is God.”

“But there’s something beneath it, something we don’t want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood,” says Rushdie. Does Mr. Rushdie really believe that if there were no God and no religion, all evil things would suddenly come to an end, forever? Do people murder only in the name of God? Hardly.

It wasn’t God who lit a match and torched those innocent women and children on the Godhra train. It wasn’t God who killed thousands more innocent people in the following days. It wasn’t God who stood by and allowed these crimes to occur. Rushdie and Indians must face the truth – the only truth. These crimes were man made. It was evil and cowardly men who murdered and who stood by and allowed the bloodshed to happen in the name of … whatever. The complete and exclusive blame rests on the persons who committed those crimes and the police who assisted them or did not intervene. Murder and accessory to murder carries the same penalty under law, at least in the U.S.

“Most of the time India is the world’s largest secular democracy; and if, once in a while, it lets off a little crazy religious steam, we mustn’t let that distort the picture,” says Rushdie. The picture, however, is very clear. India is a country in which the mob rules and minorities face death every day. How would Mr. Rushdie feel if he were at the wrong end of a little crazy religious steam? Perhaps like a minority in India. One must understand that democratic rule is not the same as majority rule. A democracy is one in which the majority rules but without trampling over the civil rights of the minority. This is what India must do to live up to its slogan.

“The horrible truth about communal slaughter in India is that we’re used to it. ... That’s how life is folks,” says Rushdie. On the one hand he talks about how he is so angry about the whole affair, then he turns around and tries to justify it somehow as just another common occurrence. This is not acceptable. It is not okay for the same problem to occur over and over again. Why doesn’t the government stop these incidents? They know what to expect when there is communal unrest - mass murder, usually of minorities. They have plenty of experience, from the manic mobs which went on a killing spree of thousands of Sikhs in 1984 to the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1992 which left thousands more dead. Why doesn’t the government develop a policy on civil unrest that would take appropriate measures to stop such bloodshed. Does it just make too much sense or do they just not care?

This is not God’s problem, this is India’s problem. You did it, you own it, you face it. And for God’s sake, do something about it.