Editor,
Can the statements “The day I start doing Hindu-Muslim, I won’t be fit to live in public life,” “The nation wants to know whether we are five, ours 25,” “shamshan-kabristan,” a clarion call to “identify criminals by their dress,” “majority is in the minority” (to describe Kerala’s Wayanad), warning the people of Gujarat during the 2017 assembly polls not to vote for the Congress as it would pave the path for Ahmed Patel to the chief ministerial chair (clearly hinting at his religious credential), Muslims getting termed ‘infiltrators’ with lots of children, and discovery of ‘vote jihad’ be counted as communal instigation or not?
If the answer is yes, is the speaker concerned considering himself unworthy to live in public life and has decided to call it a day right at this very instant?
As for another general statement heard in every corner for a decade – “The BJP has put them in their place” – it is because of this mindset plaguing a huge percentage of the population practicing the ‘liberal’ religion of Hinduism (actually believing in muscular, hatred-filled poisonous Hindutva) that the BJP has remained the most dominant political force in the national arena and the majority of the Indian states, despite absolute failure in all spheres of governance.
How funny this party is when its rabid supporters go all-out, claiming to be ‘staunch nationalists’ and zealous bhakts of Bharat Mata; yet their only obsession, right from 1988-89 till date, starts and ends with only Muslim bashing – destruction of their shrine to terming them infiltrators (with their ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ taking the lead in this matter), to assaulting the vulnerable in the name of ‘gomata’, attire, diet and mode of prayer with the invocation of the mythical ‘love jihad’!
Without daring to publish demography-related statistics to the full or going through the actual perspective, selected portions of such statistics are shrewdly and crudely chosen, picked, exploited and publicised, so as to ring an alarm bell that India is fast marching towards an ‘Islamic society’.
Even if such distorted statistics had an iota of truth, how can the nationalist bogey afford to raise concern about it? If the only identity of all citizens of the country is Indian, aren’t our Muslim citizens also Indians if we possess minimum faith in the Constitution and the laws? Or do the self-declared champions of Bharat Mata treat only Hindus as citizens of this land?
If this forms the real mindset of the BJP and its bhakts, then they must clearly admit it and stop paying lip service to Bharat Mata and the Constitution.
Kajal Chatterjee
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata