6:07 PM (1 minute ago)
Dear Ms. Majumdar,
I have finished reading A Burning - thanks to Knopf for making it available through NetGalley.
You have received many accolades, through the New York Times, Time, and the New Yorker. A Burning was selected as the #ReadWithJenna pick of the month for June 2020 on the Today Show (I have copied Today on this message). From the web page Jenna Bush Hager announces June 2020 book club pick, https://www.today.com/shop/jenna-bush-hager-june-2020-book-club-pick-t182874:
I started writing from a place of alarm and anger," Majumdar told TODAY about her inspiration for the book. "India has been changing in frightening ways and growing more intolerant of minority communities, more extremist. I definitely hope that readers will see resonances in the U.S. as well.
Indeed, the only victims in your book were Muslim: Jivan, the girl who was falsely accused of torching the train, and the Muslim family that was slaughtered on the suspicion that they slaughtered a cow.
Your Jana Kalyan Party is plainly modeled after the BJP, yet you know that the BJP has next to no influence in Bengal - never mind that its predecessor Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, and the BJP honors Mukherjee as its founder!
It was also strange that the Muslim girl was named Jivan. Jivan, or Jeevan, is a boy's name and moreover, a Hindu name.
I am convinced that the train burning was inspired by the 2002 burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 people, including 27 women and 10 children, were burnt to death, and 48 others were injured, at the rail station in Godhra, Gujarat. Unlike poor Jivan, none of the perpetrators received a death sentence.
Do BJP rallies necessarily end with slaughter of Muslims? I don't think so. A friend told me that in UP, lynchings for cow slaughter might have more to do with cattle rustling, rather than Hindu-on-Muslim violence (really, the reverse doesn't happen?).
In A Burning, you said that textbooks were being rewritten to serve the Jana Kalyan Party's agenda. Yet IRL textbooks serve other parties' agenda. I see rewriting textbooks in India similar to rewriting textbooks in the United States to include discussion of atrocities toward blacks and Native Americans.
Lastly, I invite you to use the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror to protest the murder of Ajay Pandita in Anantnag, J&K. You have over 8600 followers on Twitter. By calling for justice for Ajay Pandita and including the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror, you can create a lot of visibility for this cause.
Yours sincerely,
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