To those who are destroying India

The accusation that the ruling party is polarising the society could apply more to the opposition parties which have launched a no-holds-barred campaign against it by seeking to deepen political and emotional fissures among various communities, including between the Dalits and Hindus at large.

All the long-standing ills of India are being placed at the door of the BJP/RSS. Every incident involving a Muslim or a Dalit is being blown out of proportion by a sensation-seeking media.

Polarisation

One major terrorist incident in Paris and the flood of refugees from Islamic countries entering Europe have unleashed an anti-Muslim phobia in Western democracies.

Sweden is expelling refugees; some east European states will accept only Christian ones; differences over refugee quotas for individual countries have become contentious, with Britain, the so-called mother of democracy, unwilling to receive any significant number.

US presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to ban the entry of Muslims into the US. The majority of states there have voted against accepting any refugees from West Asia. Some Sikhs have been physically targeted in the US because they sport beards and turbans.

Compared to this surge of anti-Muslim sentiment (not to mention killing of blacks by US policemen) in established democracies, sporadic incidents in India are deplorable aberrations.

Also read - Trump is America's Modi and Modi is India's Trump

Unfortunately, the ruling dispensation has not been able to counter the opposition's destructive projection of isolated incidents as an emerging norm. The furore over rising intolerance in India has galvanised US evangelist lobbies to raise the issue of religious freedoms in India, with the state department issuing a long-winded protest on visa denial to a US delegation travelling to India to investigate matters.

A senior state department official had earlier applauded the "award wapsi" campaign.

That the US should highlight the values of pluralism and democracy that unite it to India, and then question our democratic credentials by casting doubt on religious freedom in India, is usual American sanctimoniousness.

Also read - What can a few American bigots possibly teach India about religious freedom?

As part of the unremitting "secular" attack on the ruling party, the recent World Cultural Festival has been castigated, with environmental sensitivities exploited to generate greater public reproof. The National Green Tribunal (NGT)'s decision to allow the event, a commentary says, will now lead to "real estate sharks, strip miners... to exult and policemen, if they stumble upon a rape in progress, can argue that the victim should have come to them before it started, it's already a fact accomplished." These ludicrous conclusions are being drawn from the supposed abdication of responsibilities by the NGT.

Secularism

"The World Culture Festival… will in the main be Hindu, kitsch and chaos", the commentary adds. A Sufi festival would have no doubt escaped such denigration. "Hindu" evidently sits well with kitsch and chaos, given the organic link between it and poor taste and disorder.

The secularists are fascinated by Pakistan, and so the commentary asks why it should be seditious for students to yell "Pakistan zindabad" and land up in jail. "The spirit of reasoned dissent, without which democracy withers, is being snuffed out, as unpatriotic", it says. So true. We are killing all Hindus who don't believe in the RSS. We are using airpower, tanks and artillery to decimate Kashmiri terrorists.

Also read - How Sri Sri forced me to quit World Culture Festival midway

We have jihadi groups seeking the destruction of Pakistan. We cannot abuse Modi anymore. We are told that "… as we become more like them, Pakistan is becoming more like we used to be".

Absolutely.

Pakistan is now truly secular and all jihadi elements have been eliminated, beginning with Hafiz Saeed, Lakhvi and Masood Azhar. Dawood Ibrahim has been handed over with apologies. "And let us note that, unlike Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon, who were hung to pander to majoritarian bloodlust, Mumtaz Qadri was executed in the teeth of popular opposition, with the government knowing there would be a price to pay," the commentary says admiringly.

Commentary

Of course, the "bloodthirsty" Supreme Court judges have hung more people than Saudi Arabia has. It recalls approvingly that "the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has told the SC, stray dogs have killed more people in that metropolis than terrorists have".

True, stray dogs entered the Taj and Oberoi hotels and other places and bit 166 people to death. On two other occasions earlier, they caused havoc with bombs tied to their tails.

"The religion of the greatest number is the greatest good", obviously cannot apply to Hindu India. If we were a Muslim nation, then of course we would proudly be the "Islamic Republic of India". "The government is ridden by decrepit sadhus and swayamsevak zealots, an unholy alliance of the knackered and the knickered." So true. The Budget was actually drawn up at Nagpur and Modi's agenda is decided during kumbh melas when the knackered are there in countless numbers.

Also read - Open letter to Umar Khalid

A Tagore work is cited, in which a character says, "…what I worship is much greater than the nation. To worship the nation is to bring about its destruction".

The commentary says "A century later, that still says it all." Does it when we became two nations? What is greater than the nation to worship? The United Nations? (didn't exist then.) God? (doesn't exist for many.) One's religion? (the seculars reject it.)

One must first become a nation to worship it. The Kanhaiyas, Umar Khalids and the Marxists, who want to destroy the nation even before it is truly one, are honourable followers of Tagore's character.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)