Truth Hurts, But Lies Kill

It never ceases to amaze how people like Shekhar Gupta push the belief that one large section of our society must be treated more than equal, cocooned, mollycoddled, constantly placated and pacified lest it turns against the rest of us. 

Strange, that they can’t see how this very fear, distorted secularism in our democracy in the first place, and has harmed us the most. 

One community has been given to believe that it has the ‘first right to resources’. It’s feelings, sentiments and religious sensitivities are expected to be respected before anyone else’s. 

The other however, is now openly resentful and no longer hesitates to voice it’s anger at the special treatment - be it in the sphere of education, government control over places of worship, the right to celebrate festivities and traditions, or simply the act of camouflaging names of criminals in newspaper reports.

It seems just by demanding parity, mind you not primacy, has caused much insecurity to those accustomed to being most favoured. The propagators in turn were caught surprised at the usually silent majority but are now angered at its temerity. 

Are public intellectuals, sections of the media so blinkered and devoid of new thought that instead of recognising the errors of the past and propagating the same old ideas of pampering, overindulging they rarely suggest assimilation, integration and a level playing field?

The entire effort it seems, goes into placing a community apart. A mental and physical ghettoization that neither works for the community in the long run nor the rest of the country. It is indeed unfortunate that even seventy four years after Partition it is these pussy-footing peddlers who have brought us to such a pass. Them versus Us. 

It is not Hinduism, nor is it Hindutva or any other name they want to foist on their blunders. 

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Then last but not the least comes the over-simplification and the reductionist logic which goes best with some Sunday morning whitewashing. 

“People of my generation who grew up in northern India associate Islam not with praying five times a day but with poetry, literature, cinema, and music. Indian Islam did not forbid these things. 

I have nostalgic memories of pre-Hindutva Delhi. It was a time when we would go to mushairas and concerts every other day, a time when we went to the dargah of Nizamuddin Aulia on Thursday evenings to listen to qawwalis and a time when we would wake early some mornings to breakfast on ‘nihaari’ in Karim’s restaurant that sits in the shadow of the Jama Masjid”

If things were so wonderful can the author of this piece tell us why in 1947 were the states of Punjab and Bengal torn into two?

And across the decades, in ‘pre-Hindutva’ India why were Hindu-Muslim riots so frequent and bloody?

Because, if I may exercise my right to opinion and say so -

Those who…

“went to the dargah of Nizamuddin Aulia on Thursday evenings 

to listen to qawwalis and a time when we would wake early some mornings to breakfast on ‘nihaari’ in Karim’s restaurant that sits in 

the shadow of the Jama Masjid”

....closed their eyes to ugly politics that were played out in the name of half-baked secularism by politicians, validated by qawwali aficionados, in our slums and mofussil towns. They also conveniently turned a deaf ear to the wails and screams of ordinary, marginalised Indians as they salvaged meagre belongings and family from riots, arson and slaughter. 

Not to worry, there was more advantage in the aftermath. Everyone was in the game. 

To put it on the table, my generation before it turned thirty-three in ‘Pre-Hindutva India’ witnessed -

Ranchi ‘67

Ahmedabad ‘69 ‘73

Moradabad ‘80

Nellie ‘83 

Bhiwandi ‘84

Gujarat ‘85

Jammu & Kashmir '86

Meerut ‘87

Delhi '87

Aurangabad '88

Muzaffarnagar '88

Bhagalpur ‘89

Kota '89

Badaun '89

Indore '89

Kashmiri Pandits ‘90

Colonelganj '90

Gujarat '90

Karnataka '90

Hyderabad '90

Kanpur '90

Agra '90

Gonda '90

Khurja '90

Saharanpur '91

Meerut '91

Varanasi '91

Sitamarhi '92

Bombay ‘92

Karnataka '92

Hubli '94

Bangalore ‘94

But then, some only remember the succulent nihaari. 

After all, what is a little blood on the street…?

~If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have got you labelled a radical sixty years ago, a liberal thirty years ago and a racist today~ Thomas Sowell