The tragedy of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland didn't make it to the headlines. It was competing with the finals of the World Cup and the two billion viewers or nearly a third of the world had little time for that story.Ballymoney is a small Irish village, much smaller than Ayodhya, about 40 miles northwest of Belfast. On Sunday, three young boys aged ten, nine and seven, were burned to death there in a firebomb attack on their home as they slept. Their Catholic mother escaped with her Protestant boyfriend who was beaten back by flames as he returned to rescue Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn crying for help.The deaths were termed a "turning point" in the fractious stand-off over the Protestant Orange Order's stymied attempts to the predominantly Catholic Garvaghy Road in Portadown. "What price your principles now?" asked Seamus Mallon, the Catholic deputy leader of the New Belfast Assembly. "Does it take one, two or three children?"Does it take one, two or three Hindus and Muslims? Does it take one,two or three Taleban? Does it take one, two or three Milosevic? How many morons and bigots does it take to set a village on fire? This weekend tragedy of orange in the west is like another tragedy of orange in the east, and shame all around. Ballymoney is not Ayodhya, nor is it Mumbai or Coimbatore where hundreds killed hundreds in the name of their God. Indeed, no two bigots are alike.The Bajrang Dal and other militant Hindu groups, like the Order of Orange responsible for Sunday's deaths, will most likely say they have little in common and might even argue about the supremacy of their Gods. But as images of Drumcree and Garvaghy Road where the walk was scheduled, the pickets and the stand-off flashed on the television screens, they were starkly reminiscent of another incident in distant Ayodhya where in the name of God, militants clawed their way up an ancient mosque and tore it down in full view of he world.The Garvaghy Road march - and hundreds of others like it across the province - commemoratesthe defeat of Catholic King James 11 by King William of Orange at the Battle of Boyne in 1690. Same logic as the mythical birthplace of Rama and the right of some to build a temple on the blood of others because before that someone had built a mosque on the blood of others.Like Catholics killing Protestants killing Catholics in search of the original killer. Like Israelis and Palestinians slaughtering their way back into history to see who started to all. The fifteen-minute walk down Garvaghy Road by the Orange Order, if allowed to proceed, will take place in the shadow of three little coffins of children who probably didn't know what the Orange Order is all about.Rev Ian Paisley, the uncompromising hard-line Protestant leader walked around the boys' neighbourhood and spoke of the "diabolical, hellish deed"that took their lives. But most members of the Protestant Orange Order disavowed any responsibility. This version of God does not call for any responsibility. A foreign hand probably hurled the bombthat killed the boys.National leaders of the Orange Order said they would scale down protests across Northern Ireland against the ban that has prevented them from marching through the Catholic enclave. The proposed march is a provocation in league with dead pigs that were thrown into a mosque in Bangalore some years ago. Eight days of violence and three dead boys for the right to march through a road in the name of God.Earlier, Orangemen in the town of Portadown vowed to continue their standoff with British security forces who have enforced the ban on them parading from the village of Drumcree through Portadown's Catholic nationalist quarter.Commentators, those who cared to look beyond the din of football, are hoping the tragedy will lead to peace. Same story. With every atrocity in Northern Ireland as with every attack in the name of God in India, the bereaved express the hope that their personal loss will somehow bring people to their senses. After the deaths, Rev William Bingham, a Presbytarianminister and a grand chaplain of the order called on his people to back off and urged Orangemen "not to allow these colours that we wear so proudly to be brought into the gutter like a political football used by others for an agenda that is not Orangeism."His intervention is seen as the first sign that moderate Orangemen are prepared to break ranks with those at Drumcree, the site of the standoff between encamped soldiers and marchers. The Order however said it was supporting its Portadown members' decision to remain in Drumcree, probably eyeball to eyeball with security forces. On Monday morning in Drumcree a gaggle of protestors were shouting across the barbed wires calling the soldiers "fenians" - a derogatory term usually reserved for Catholics. One women protestor describing herself as a "proper loyalist" proudly told reporters, "What about all our children that the IRA killed?"How far back is far enough for this God?
