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Highlights
The eerie lack of remorse from general public in the recent event of lynching a person in Bisada village which is right next to Delhi, for keeping ‘beef’ is portentous sign for India.
Sometime this question emanates in my mind while listening to the debates of some national leaders on television and end up spending the night with my beloved cup of coffee mulling over the possible replies for this question. So I pose this question to the general public irrespective of their political or caste inclination (pro-Modi. Anti-Modi, RSS supports, Hindu extremists, Muslim extremists, so called ‘Moral Police’, left, Right etc) as it is high time that we start deliberating on the question.
The eerie lack of remorse from general public in the recent event of lynching a person in Bisada village which is right next to Delhi, for keeping ‘beef’ is portentous sign for India. For the village who never had a history of communal disharmony, it is shocking that an enormous mob would pull a man out of his own house and kill him. So can we treat this incident as the evidence for growing religious intolerance across India or an odd case of local hooliganism in the region?
Communal violence has gained lot of traction in the light of recent events and analysts are suggesting that communal tensions are high. It is very common to find a discussion on Hindu-Muslim harmony on one of the many news channels which adorn our televisions with advocates of both the sides stuck on half baked, biased account of unfortunate events such as Godhra Kand, Gujrat riots, Babri masjid demolition, India- Pakistan partition etc.
I vividly remember one of my discussions with my friends where they would always support the violence by arguing that when India and Pakistan was partitioned, India was meant for Hindus and Pakistan was made for Muslims. So they have no right to live in India. They would even say that in Quran it is written that it is sacred duty of Muslims to hunt ‘Kafirs’ where my friends equated Kafirs to Hindus. They would quote English translations of Hindu religious scriptures to justify the violence meted to muslims and vice-versa. I would debate and postulate hard but in the end I have to give up. People like us are losing this battle every day and I could just request my friends to reconsider their views and to go and actually read the scriptures that they keep mentioning.
Recently I heard that a special person form Gujrat who is fighting for reservation for Patel clan is known preaching to his followers that it is better to kill someone rather than doing suicide.Partisanship politics also share a huge quota of blame for fueling religious sentiments. The religious extremist groups such as RSS, AIMM, Bajrang Dal etc. always attach an emotive sentiments to the past incidents and play it to sway the favor of the crowd. They start their rallies with chanting of mantras and a line which would register a full point in a hate speech test. They would relate their agenda to a historic event or a person and would then follow to rouse the sentiments of the people. And we, being a people of immense sentiment potential, would get catalogued with their partisan agendas.
So I just want to ask our leaders that when we will stop playing the communal card and actually start moving forward. India despite being a developing country is facing mammoth issues in term of malnutrition, education, mass exodus of educated people from India, insurgency, etc which needs immediate attention of our country’s leaders. We have to start tackling the reality instead of chasing the perception. The sentiments of people attached to these incidents are coherent and justifiable but we have to understand one point that to move forward we have to get past these issues. We have to stop being susceptible to ploys of communal forces working for their own benefits.
Germany is the best suited example in this scenario. Germany was destroyed two times in war and led to the brink of destruction with poor leadership but still the country sprung itself and recovered to be one of the most stable European country in terms of economy and internal peace. We have bigger vices in India which we can fight for but another blood spilled in the name of religion is disrespectful for the god in the name of whom you are fighting. When in a country people are dying of hunger and disease, it is illogical to the point of being ridiculous that we continue fighting in the name of religion. I just want to conclude by saying this that we should always know when to play our cards, when to hold our cards or when to withdraw our cards.
Swaptik Chowdhury with Piyush Chaudhari
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