Permanent Conflict Toward Hindu Rashtra Or Peaceful Dialogue For Hindustan?
You are already Here! Don’t leave without Like, Share, Commenting, or Tweet…be the Voice of the Free Press!!
EDITORIAL: By Saeed Naqvi, Copy Edited by Adam Rizvi, TIO: Neither anger nor sadness but a sort of numbness gripped me as a bulldozer was brought into focus, its giant fingers crashing on the roof, scratching the walls and probing deep into the entrails of the house. Within minutes the house was a heap of rubble.
It was impossible to reconcile this image with the bubble taking shape in my mind. The year was 1995. Frank Wisner, one of the most charming of the US ambassadors, looked at me in bewilderment and, without change of expression, pressed the intercom for his counselor: “I am sending you someone with a case that with tickle you.”
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Is There Another Cuban Missile Crisis In The Offing?
The counselor was tickled. My daughter was keen to get a US visa stamped on her passport (She had been invited for a seminar in New York) and she was keen to surrender the documents which gave her permanent residence in the US, where she had spent eight years in the groves of academe.
A visa stamped at last on her Indian passport, with high self-esteem she went about her duties as a social worker in some remote part of the state which Yogi Adityanath now administers as its Chief Minister. It was once my home state too.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Muslims Protest against Fascist Modi Regime in USA and Canada
The return journey from her place of work was in a jam-packed second-class compartment. She found a seat next to a family having fruit for lunch. The man, a kindly soul, offered her an orange.” Abhi mun naheen hai.” (Thanks, but I don’t feel like having an orange.) The man persisted: “Le lo beti, hum koi Mussalman naheen hain.” (Take it, daughter, I am not a Muslim.)
Pride in an Indian passport and the reality of the new emerging India must have hit her like a rifle shot.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: India and the Arab world Protests, Will it Lead To Something New?
I returned to some more bulldozing accompanied by a cacophony of speakers supporting or opposing the spectacle. Then, at Prime Time, Rishika Baruah of NDTV came into focus anchoring a carefully compiled catalog of atrocities against Dalits. The first episode is in Rae Bareli. A group of upper-caste boys has encircled a boy from one of the lower castes. The leader of the gang, in jeans and a t-shirt, watches the boy being beaten by his friends. Then as a grand finale, the leader, seated on a large high stone, stretches out one leg. The gang then invites the lower caste boy to lick their gang leader’s foot from heel to toe.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Evolving Security Dynamic in West Asia and India’s Challenges
The next scene shows a man in a shirt and trousers being instructed by middle-aged men to lie on his stomach and rub his nose in a circle marked in chalk for clarity. He apparently had the temerity to stand on a stone outside the temple to watch a show.
The third incident shows a girl with a thali full of puja items being turned away by the priest from the temple where she has come to make an offering because of her examinations the next day.
Glimmering from Shadows: Nikhat Zareen makes India proud!!
The piece-de-resistance is the bridegroom who comes riding a horse. Before the bridegroom is received by his bride and her family, the village influential encircle him.
One of the village superiors leaps to the height of the horse and administers an almighty slap on the bridegroom’s face, even as the bride watches in horror. How dare a Dalit come riding a horse? Oddly this rare focus on Dalit atrocities is not backed up by screaming discussants on a long leash.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Kashi, Mathura Mosques, Private Grief of Muslims, Not The World’s Concern
Provide an instance of hijab in schools, beef in a refrigerator, love jihad, and such like provocations: this is the stuff channels instantly divide their screens into four, six, or eight windows. From the very start, discussions are a cacophony, with two priceless mullahs thrown in, speaking out of turn.
The hoopla that attends coverage of a subject of a communal color is singularly missing in Rishika Baruah’s impressive catalog of atrocities against Dalits. Each one of the episodes would have yielded a sober discussion on social inequity, and the barbarism it can lead to. Remember the Dalit girl of Hathras – raped, murdered, and cremated under police protection past midnight without as much as informing the girl’s parents. M. N. Srinivas, the great sociologist, asked the pithy question which cannot be easily answered. “What is Hinduism without caste?” Scholar, S. S. Anant introduces another complexity: the three upper castes have relative stability in their enclaves.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Eid Celebrated at the Indian Consulate, New York, Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
The lower castes who are subdivided into a hierarchy of a hundred sub-castes live under a firm stipulation: in times of distress, they may descend to take up the occupation of those below them but may never ascend even a notch.
All of this, the material is like the categories of Ashraf, Ajlaf, and Arzal among Muslims in feudal times. These categories were recognized but treated like family secrets not to be shed light on. Likewise, caste during elections is thrashed to smithereens, divided and subdivided into a hundred categories to fulfill electoral needs. But once elections are over, the subject that defines so much of our lives is tucked away in the mind’s dark caverns.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: India: Use of Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) in Policing.
It has to be left undiscussed because one-half of Hindu society does not wish to place its warts before a mirror; the other half can’t imagine a social order without caste. Caste, in other words, is an ancient social habit, inextricably woven into our lives. Communalism is a political project which helps contain caste to some extent. The fear of Muslims as an enemy image may result in Hindu consolidation but only politically. Socially that upper caste boy in Rae Bareli still gets the lower caste boy to lick his foot.
Also Read, Tweet & Share: Converting from Hinduism to any other religion is not an option in India!
On another scale, embers left behind by caste-communal friction can prepare the ground for Savarkar’s or the RSS’s idea of Hindu nationalism. That will also require Kashmir on a boil forever, relations with Pakistan on torrid heat always, and Hindu-Muslim enmity, in perpetuity. Are we ready for it? Or should we defuse issues by setting up a permanent dialogue towards Hindustan?
Also, Read more from this Author: Why Is India’s Successful 1971 Sri Lanka Intervention, A Forgotten Story?
