Fanatic supporters of BJP (readers must know that it is not representative of an average Indian) have torn down mosques, burnt shrines and graveyards; they have stopped Muslims on the street and have tortured them until they would yield to the demand of chanting praise for Ram, the Hindu deity; there are evidencing footages, when upon refusal to chant, the Muslims are mercilessly beaten and clubbed to death.
Recently, a schoolteacher, possibly a devout follower and disciple of monstrous Modi, asked the entire class to slap their Muslim classmate as a punishment— the pupils queued up and laid their innocent, yet perennially damaging the self-esteem and respect of their classmate, a tight slap on the innocent victims face. That’s India of Modi. The world prefers to turn a blind eye to its farce of being secular.
Kashmir has been on fire for almost five decades, and India with its usual disrespect to norms, attempted to rub dust in the eyes of the world opinion by wanting to host the G-20 summit in Srinagar. This blatant diplomatic insult has gone unpunished. Delegates of all countries, barring China, arrived in Srinagar to attend.
The world is besotted by over a billion people market for its goods and services. Economic interest prevails over human dignity. Kashmir, which is home to 7.5 million Muslims, has been under siege of the oppressive Indian military.
Today more than 600,000 soldiers not only monitor the movements through curfews and road blocks, but are also ever ready to instigate, so that they can have opportunity to indulge in wholesale massacre, murder, rape, loot and plunder. The world conscience is numb.
Again with impudence Modi’s government had the audacity to legislate and make it easier for adherents of several South Asian religions facing atrocities anywhere in the world to acquire citizenship but the legislation pointedly excludes Muslims.
This is one major step taken by Modi to convert the secular nature of Indian society into an intolerant Hindu state. Modi has been at the demolition of the Gandhian-Nehruvian principles of peace and tolerance. It all started when the BJP celebrated the tearing down of the Babri mosque at Ayodhaya to build in its place a temple for Ram, the deity.
He followed the celebration with a Hitlerite massacre of at least 3000 or more Muslim men, women and children in his native state of Gujarat in 2002. He was filled with pride and arrogance on being labelled a true Hindu nationalist. Modi lives with this belief, obviously that all Muslims of India are essentially Pakistanis — scratch an Indian Muslim only skin deep, and you find a Pakistani is his philosophy.
In the last nine years of his rule, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and other minorities have been beaten to cold death. Instead of dousing religious fanatical sentiments, the BJP government has been prodding die-hard Hindu elements to infuriate and later persecute Muslims.
Modi’s philosophy of religious bigotry should be seen as a sign of danger to world peace— Hitler was appeased and the consequences are part of woeful history. If the world community, alongside the by and large tolerant Indian and noble Hindus do not react and stop this madness of religious frenzy at the central government level, we may witness a “Hindu Hitler” who will cleanse not just India, but the entire subcontinent and may be beyond. The madness must stop.
Modi has been viciously changing the Muslim names of cities, towns and streets. The cities of Allahbad, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Aligarh, etc., are under the hammer so are the streets of New Delhi , that are named after not just Mughal Emperors but also after the many Muslim other rulers of the subcontinent. By changing names, Modi cannot rewrite history — its present status owes a debt to its glorious past of the last thousand years of Muslim rule that gave India their highest standards and mechanics of revenue collection, district management, arts and culture and above all good governance.
Just as India hoodwinked its nonaligned status to the global spectators while it actually was sitting in the lap of Moscow, so is the case today of its appearance as a secular state, which surely it is not. Under Modi, India represents a communal mindset, emerging from the delusional version of Hindutva.
If Rahul Gandhi and his I.N.D.I.A. association fail to check his march to win the 2024 general elections, Indians will be dancing around the pyre, upon which will burn to ashes, Indian democracy, alongside the principles of Gandhi and Nehru. If India ceases to be secular, it will cease to be India. The fault lines are many that can crack up and lead to disintegration, starting from Mizoram and others in Northeast and Khalistan in the Northwest.
(Concluded)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
The writer is a senior banker & freelance contributor
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