Last evening the news came in that a senior journalist named Shujaat Bukhari was gunned down in Kashmir. I logged into Twitter to know more about the incident. On Twitter, the self-styled liberals become Sherlock Holmes whenever someone who appears on their side is killed while they become Manmohan Singh when a ‘Sanghi’ is killed. I was intrigued as to whom will they blame, as there is no ‘Hindu right wing’ in Kashmir.

They found a convenient target – Anand Ranganathan.

Now those who don’t know, Anand is anything but a Sanghi. You search for his views on RSS on Twitter and you will know. I searched, and this was the top result:

The RSS is the Vatican of India – run by paranoid geriatrics, steeped in ignorance, doing charity with an agenda, fooling the gullible. — Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) September 12, 2015

For the moment, forget Anand’s views on RSS. Let’s focus on why Anand was attacked. A few days ago, Anand had pointed out that Shujaat Bukhari himself had religious beliefs that can be called anything but moderate. Anand based his arguments on tweets posted by Bukhari, and those tweets are still there.

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Somehow in liberal la-la-land, Shujaat Bukhari was killed because Anand Ranganathan thought his views were not moderate enough!

Dear liberals, do you really think that this is how Jihadis in Kashmir find their targets? Ki jisko Anand Ranganathan Islamist bole, usko goli se maar do? Kal ko Anand Ranganthan says Gilani is an Islamist, to Jihadi Gilani ko goli maar denge kya?

Well if it was so simple, Kashmir would have been solved long back. Anand just needs to name the people who are soft on terror, Jihadis will do the rest. We wouldn’t even be needing an Army there. If only Rajnath Singh knew the superpower of Anand Ranganathan.

You may wonder why the self-styled liberals took such a silly stand of blaming Anand Ranganathan for his views – which were spot on – within minutes of news of Bukhari’s death being broken instead of blaming those who actually fired the bullets.

There is no grand conspiracy here, it is a pavlovian response.

Whenever there is an incident where Islamic terrorism could be involved, a section will blame anyone apart from Islamism. It is a worldwide phenomenon among the self-styled liberals, and the Indian liberals are just bad xerox copy of their Western originals. They adopt the same template back here, including in Kashmir.

The religious problem of Jihad is dressed up as some political problem of Azaadi. Religious bigotry against Kashmiri Pandits is dressed up as resentment against socio-economic disparity. Burhan Wani is dressed up as son of poor headmaster.

So how can they blame Islamists when they are wired not to do so?

As they can’t blame Hindu right wingers in this case directly – because forget Sanghis, there are hardly any Hindus left in Kashmir – they started blaming Anand Ranganathan. The agenda to shield Islamic extremism continued to be their top priority even when one of their own was murdered.

This is not to say that they are not grieving over the murder. This feeling is painful. It’s painful as they can’t figure out why the Islamic terrorists will target one of their own? They are in shock.

In this state of shock, their first reaction was prevarication – attack Anand instead of Jihadis. And the second reaction is of denial – how do we know Lashkar killed him?

Pakistan is an Islamic republic with a Shariyat compliant laws; the ones Kashmiri Jihadis dream of. Still Pakistan sees routine terrorist attacks by terrorists. Because for them, Pakistan is not Islamic enough!

Just cut the crap dear ‘liberals’. Bukhari was not killed because Anand thought he was not moderate enough, but because organisations like Lashkar thought he was not extremist enough.

I don’t even want to point out the obvious hypocrisy here of supporting ‘Afzal hum sharminda hain, tere qaatil zinda hain’ – a direct call to avenge a death – as ‘free speech’ while attacking Anand for making an observation that didn’t call for any violent attacks or even censorship of views.

The self-styled liberals seem to have forgotten that Azaadi or the dream of Islamic caliphate leads to a graveyard. Like communist utopia leads to hunger and devastation. Islamic Jihad is a slippery slope. It’s like fire. Just because you added fuel to fire doesn’t mean the fire won’t consume you when it spreads.

But the ‘liberals’ are indeed in pain. They are angry too. They want revenge (Afzal hum sharminda hain syndrome). But they are not looking to extract revenge from the Jihadis, but from Anand Ranganathan!

As I had put earlier in this article, Anand is not Sanghi, in fact, not even a ‘right winger’. But when you are so far Left in your hatred, even the center appears far-right. The same way Islamic Jihadis didn’t find Shujaat Islamist enough.