Can someone please correct the title of the post ? It should read "Shall neither forget, nor forgive" or "Never forget, never forgive".
The following is what I recall from that period, apologize in advance for the long post. Unlike some of you who were quite young and still in school or college, I was well into the declining days of my youth. 26/11/08 unfortunately was just in a long series of attacks on India orchestrated by Pakistan, it lives on in infamy because of the gruesomeness, brazenness and how the death played out live on TV for 3 days straight.
The 2000s was a terrible time for India but things got much worse from around 2005 onwards when a month did not pass without a terror attack. If it was Delhi one day then it was Mumbai the next, then Allahabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi again, Surat, Pune, Ahmedabad,Mumbai again...the list , death toll and destruction was endless. The government not just looked clueless and helpless but their "do absolutely nothing" policy had begun to sow suspicion if they were equally guilty either through ignorance or incompetence or worse deliberately malicious. I shake my head when people call Rajnath Singh as "kadi ninda" not realizing how terrible leaders like Sharad Pawar, Shivraj Patil, P.Chidambaram were for our national security.
By 2008, the public had lost all faith in the government to safeguard the life and liberty of the citizens. One did not feel safe at an airport or in a train or in court or in a restaurant or hotel. It was in this backdrop that something called "hindu terror" was concocted to change the public opinion. A highly unpopular UPA, especially Rahul Gandhi and his close circle started talking about "hindu terror" in early 2008 which left many baffled. I vividly recall Malegaon 2.0, and how NDTV would just not let the case go. It was very confusing at first because both by casualty count and the fact that India had become accustomed to bomb blasts, the media's obsession with this attack seemed strange . But by October 2008 it became clear that there was a much much more sinister and nefarious intent. The arrests of Sadhvi Pragya and Col. Purohit and making them as the prime accused in 2008 Malegaon blasts shook the country.IB and the local investigating agencies had blamed Malegaon blasts on a SIMI module soon after their preliminary investigation but just a couple of weeks later they made a 180 degree turn to accuse members of a unknown hindu group called 'Abhinav Bharat' with no history of violence let alone terror attacks. For the small minority who followed national security and terrorism issues closely, it just seemed a little too convenient. It was not as if Malegaon blasts were a one off, India by that time had been a routine victim of islamic terrorism, so it hardly made sense why such a great effort was being made to villainize a hindu group and sections of the Indian Army unless it was to sow confusion in the minds of public that the greater danger to the nation was not from islamic radicals or Pakistan but from pro-Hindu groups.
The reason I speak of 2008 Malegaon blasts is because in my opinion there is a linear and direct connection between the concocted hindu terror theory->Malegaon 2008 blasts -> arrests of Sadhvi Pragya, Col.Purohit and others and -> the attacks of 26/11/08. A product of that period, ISI sponsored full time bigot and part-time self proclaimed "defense analyst" Zaid Hamid shot to prominence around 2006-2007, and he never failed to talk about how "RSS fascists" have taken over Indian military, and that Indian nukes are a threat to the world! Somehow the "hindu terror" theory and later accusing Col.Purohit , Maj.Ramesh Upadhyaya and Sadhvi Pragya for Malegaon just felt like playing as per the ISI script.
Within the first 12 hours of 26/11, the talking heads on Pakistani channels, many known ISI stooges from Zaid Hamid to Hamid Gul were wheeled in front of the cameras to talk about "RSS terrorists" and how some of the 26/11 terrorists were talking in "hindi accent" and wore saffron threads around their wrists! The thing that really caught the attention of some of us was when the news of Hemant Karkare's death came out. The Pakis and their supporters in India immediately said this was proof that hindu terrorists were behind 26/11 because Hemant Karkare was investigating Malegaon among other terror incidents by the so-called "hindu terrorists". Question is, who sent Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar to the road leading to Cama Hospital where they were ambushed by the waiting terrorists ? The known islamic terror sympathizer and rabid hindu hater Digvijay Singh, was said to have been close to Hemant Karkare. Infact in later days Digvijay Singh admitted that he was the last person to call Hemant Karkare on the fateful day. What went on in the conversation ? Did Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar walk into a pre-made trap with the intention of blaming the entire 26/11 atrocity on RSS, ABVP and other hindu groups and absolve Pakistan and islamic terror modules from all previous terrorist attacks ? We will probably never know. What we do know is had it not been for the heroics of Constable Tukaram Omble, and arresting one of the terrorists alive, it was very likely the water would have been muddied to implicate RSS just the way they tried doing with Malegaon. Years later, an unrepentant Digvijay Singh was the chief guest at the release of Aziz Burney's conspiratorial book '26/11 RSS ki Saazish'.
Sadly, 26/11/08 too was forgotten. There were further attacks on other Indian cities including Mumbai after 26/11 that killed hundreds more. Nothing was ever done other than the shameful capitulation at Sharm-el-Sheikh. And if the Maharashtra ATS had not been so keen to try and implicate Col.Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya for the Samjoutha blasts (again, something that Pakistani ISI stooges had been claiming for while), and making some bizarre accusations, it is possible that they would have succeeded in imprisoning senior members of RSS, ABVP and pro-hindu, pro-national organizations in the name of "hindu terror".
26/11/08 violently shook me as a person and as a citizen. It was the first time i started believing what many awake dharmics had been saying for a long time that the total destruction of India and enslavement of the remaining hindus is the ultimate goal. It also proved that there were far deeper and greater conspiracies being hatched against the nation everyday than we would like to admit. There were few bright spots in the depressing coal mine that was India those days, 1. Advani completely lost relevance within his own party and was eventually forced to make way for a younger generation. 2. BRF online and 'New Indian Express' in traditional media were two sources that right from the beginning suspected there was more to post-Malegaon arrests and 26/11/08 attacks. and 3. In their eager to completely villainize, arrest and dismantle hindu organizations, Maharashtra ATS sent officers to UP to arrest a young seer in Gorakhpur, upon hearing this the then UP CM asked MH ATS to stuff it and walk back to where they came from! The name of the young seer was Yogi Adityanath and the then UP CM was Mayawati.
Karma may be delayed but is never denied. The planners, executors and conspirators of 26/11/08 will someday pay for the deaths of 166 innocent victims including many children. Never forget that we are in a civilizational war, it is not upto a single individual and a single party to carry this forward, but the weight of this responsibility and to carry forward the civilizational memory of our wounds falls rests on all of us.