Making India Secular

Kindly consider this as a follow up article to my previous one – Making India Moral.

Thankfully, I am not a celebrity and my post is not going viral. I am sure if that were the case, I would have woken up to find several death, rape or acid threats in my inbox. Even more assuring is that fact that I am not a Muslim. Otherwise I would have been told by now to leave India altogether and shift to Pakistan, where I belong. What people fail to understand is that when termites and rodents infect your house, you don’t simply shift your house from one to another; rather you take steps to clean the house and medicate it so as to rid it of these infections. Same with our bodies. If our bodies fall sick, we don’t just change them; we work towards healing them. That is exactly what we need to do. We need to clean the psyche of people of India. We need to start over. We need to end this hate politics. There has to be a start somewhere. It was so easy for all nationals to tell Aamir Khan to leave India, just because he worded his heartfelt feelings. Poor chap was a Muslim and politicians simply turned his statement into a communal one!!!! I am sure Aamir Khan must have felt cheated that day for all his camaraderie and work of the past few years were left unconsidered, and he, who is the thinking actor of Indian cinema, was characterized as anti-India!

Who said terrorism is amongst Muslims only? According to news reports, 2016 had 927 terror attacks (taken up by Muslims)¹ compared to 1048 attacks by Maoists (who are not Muslims)². Then why are we always blaming one community? While I don’t have the latest data, news reports and statistics published by established, renowned and much respected dailies and fortnightlies clearly state that the incidences of terror in India are on a rise. Before you jump to any conclusion, read in full. Incidences of terror in India are on a rise; but this terror is saffron terror, inflicted by staunch Hindus on minorities like Muslims and Christians^{3 & 4}. What is the difference between us and “them” then. Sometimes it’s in the name or morality (Romeo Squad), Gau-raksha or simply pure vote-bank politics (Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013) – lynching, killing and humiliating of minorities continues and is on a grow in our nation.

I am not a minority, and still I am scared of my security and the security of my loved ones. Imagine how people belonging to the minorities must be feeling! I have no aspirations to enter politics or become a political writer. I only aim to bring to notice how Indian Hindus are walking the double-sided sword –by becoming the inflicted and the inflictor at the same time. The Hindu culture used to be the pride of India. These days, it has become the vice of India. All the teachings of Hindu philosophers have gone down the drain of politics – what remains are the fanatics and their “badle ki bhawna”. While I do not believe in remaining silent and bearing what is wrong; I also do not believe that any wrong can be set right by losing our own standards or diminishing our own conscience. I am a follower of Modi regime and heartily feel that Modi is trying to make India a better place. But it is also true, that in trying to win votes and coming to power, Modi has forsaken his reign on Hindu fanatical groups like RSS. This has resulted in an unchecked wave of hate politics in India, taking it from bad to worse. With actions like these, the minorities will be further encouraged to indulge in hate politics themselves. Who will live in the end when each and every member of the society is hell-bent on killing the other?

I saw a documentary on Muzaffarnagar riots. Most people, who were saved during the riots, claimed to have known their perpetrators. They all claimed that their perpetrators were friends or acquaintances. Yet, when it came to hurling wounds, these so-called friends and acquaintances did not shy away from doing the hideous deeds that they did to the women and to their own friends of the opposite community. Is this where we are? How can a person survive knowing that friends can’t be trusted! If you make friends with only one kind of community, where does India stand on its scale of secularism?

© 2017 Mansi Paul Chowdhury