P.A. Chacko

If Prime Minister Modi and his Sangis think that the minority communities in India are living in fool’s paradise, they are totally mistaken. It should be the other way around. The members of the minority communities, be they Muslims, Christians or of linguistic communities, do not ever think that they deserve to be the victims of the majority community’s vicious communal harassment bordering on persecution, or to be the beneficiaries of their benevolence.

Even advising one’s community colleagues to pray for the good of the nation is interpreted as an affront to the ruling party. Hence, such actions are dubbed as anti-national activities. People who take to such viscous interpretation are themselves living in fool’s paradise and project their feeling of insecurity. Make no mistake. The sadhus and sadvins, Hindu acharyas and pundits are making political statements every day, supporting the majority community’s religio-political agenda. Such actions are considered perfectly normal in the eyes of the rank and file of the BJP, RSS, Sang Parivar conglomerate. In such a vitiated atmosphere, free thinking citizens cannot express their opinion or call for a change in government policies or pray for good governance.

There is no problem when a Hindu religious, Sadhu presides over a state as the political ruler occupying the chair of the Chief Minister. So, it is only when a Christian priest or a minority community member advises his group members to pray for the good of the nation, the hornet’s nest is unleashed against him and his community. Such hypocritical looking through yellow prism ought to stop in this land where the constitution guarantees freedom of speech and worship, freedom to dissent logically and decently. Every citizen in this democratic nation is a political ‘animal.’ Do only some have freedom to make statements like a political ‘animal’? Why are some considering themselves brazenly ‘more equal’ than the rest?

Who said minority religious community members cannot make a political statement? They are part and parcel of this land. Let their critics know that when they point their finger at their enemy, there are three other fingers pointing back at them! So, indulge in vicious interpretations of others’ actions at the risk of self-condemnation.

The recent advise of the Delhi Archbishop to his Catholic members to keep in mind the good of the nation and to pray for the welfare of the nation has provoked the fanatical elements in the majority community, and the government in particular, to come out with all the arrows in their quiver to start a Mahabharata against the Christian community. One TV channel even went to the extent of describing it as an act of manipulation by a foreign hand, meaning the Vatican. The escalation of the Hindutwa fury went to such an extent that the anti-Christian demonstrators not only showered abuses on the Indian Christian community but even trampled over the picture of the Pope, the head of the world Catholic community. Can one call it a civilized gentry’s response?

That the majority community is laboring under insecurity feeling is manifested by its getting an assortment of different para-military forces trained with arms and arsenal with the justification: ‘We need to defend our community.’ The military training going on in Madhya Pradesh for RSS, Bajarang Dal workers given by ex military personnel is a terrorist threat to the democratic fabric of the nation. Where are the media to look into it squarely and fairly? If every community were to prepare its own trained para-forces for defending its interest, what would happen to this land?

The nation is being brought to a precipice where the minorities are being forced to feel that they are not wanted in this country. They are told in their face that those who do not pay obeisance to ‘Go-Mata,’ (mother cow), or do not sing Vande Mataram or do not toe the line of the Hindutva ideology are to get lost or face consequences! We have been witnessing the escalation of such fanatic fury for the past few years but especially in very recent times.

The venom- spewing marauders seem to be emboldened by the government in power and they get a free hand to lynch and hang people.

The so-called fringe laments are not just ‘fringe.’ They are an army of well trained, well paid ‘karsevaks,’ who arrogate to themselves, with immunity, freedom to demolish mosques and churches, disrupt worship and prayer, destroy religious statues, and create communal terror. They enjoy overt and covert benevolence and protection of politicians and religious patriarchs.

This is not the India envisaged by the great freedom fighters and the founding fathers of the independent nation. Independent India was the fruit of the toil and struggle, sweat and blood, and sacrifice of those civilized men and women of mettle. They gave us a free India. They blessed this nation with good principles of governance, fundamental freedoms, and noble duties for every citizen enshrined in the holy scripture of the nation called the constitution.

Today, this India is being mauled and massacred by fanatical terrorist religious forces. In the words of Yashwant Sinha, former BJP Finance Minister, the nation is going through an undeclared emergency. “The emergency which we witness currently is an undeclared one. It is a slow poison which is being injected into the body politic of this country.’ A chastened BJP member and former minister Arun Shourie has similar opinion.

Under the BJP dispensation, all along, the Muslims have been targeted as the enemy of the country. And, they were told by Hindutva forces to get lost in Pakistan. Now they are directing their poisoned arrows towards the Indian Christian community. Its churches are vandalized; its shrines and sanctuaries are desecrated. The statues of Christian saints are raised to the ground in Taliban style. They are told to shut up and go to hell!

The terror of vandalism which the satanic forces are unleashing against all minorities is with the aim of eliminating them or making them submissive to the dictates of the fanatical political forces. This ought to stop. India is for everyone living as citizen in this country. No one has the license to pulverize another’s fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the sacred constitution of India.