This is the "Ghaznavi" SIMI is manifestly waiting for. The poster, pregnant with meaning, reveals the mind of the organisation. It makes a political statement which embeds a yearning for re-enactment of the Ghaznavid era, with Islamic subjugation of India accompanied by the same tyranny of the Dark Ages over the people of this country. Quite clearly, its members and their mentors have neither reconciled to the liquidation of the Mohammedan rule over India more than 150 years ago nor to the post-independence national governments. Strangely, the latter, most of whom opted for this country at the time of its religion-based partition sixty years ago, have found it necessary to instill among their wards a sense of separateness from the country of their choice. Mentoring them in madrasas and mosques, they have infused into the vulnerable minds Islamic fundamentalism and the spirit of violent militancy and subversion, fostering in them a vision that is essentially delusionary.

A movement initiated basically for the uplift of Muslims, SIMI has strayed far away from its avowed objectives - acquiring politico-religious overtones with aims that are untenable in present-day India. The government should come down with a heavy hand on such seditious tendencies and the seminaries that promote them. However, all of us, more so the professedly secular party heading the Central ruling combine with its unwavering decades-long commitment to the community's welfare, need to introspect as to why a few among our Muslim minority feel so intensely alienated from their own country.