Daily Times

If the ultra-right Hindu nationalists would have directed even a quarter of the energy spent in crying crocodile tears at our so-called decay to taking a deeper look within, over 15 per cent of its population would not have been reduced to a punching bag. May it be their homes, livelihoods, or practices, nothing is apparently safe from the saffron-robed face of communal terror. The latest matchstick to set the kerosene keg ablaze has come in the form of videos of Hindu religious leaders calling for mass killings in Haridwar. Scraping raw the wounds of disastrous Gujarat riots, the three-day hate speech conclave repeatedly waged calls to finish “20 lakh of them” to finally rubberstamp the superiority of Hindus over all other faiths.

Do not fear the police, they exclaimed as they incited rage against Christmas celebrations, the first Sikh prime minister and harped on for a cleansing based on the state-sponsored massacre of Rohingya Muslims. Now, had it been wishful thinking of a few weaving castles in the air, the entire renegade would not have been as worrisome.

But since it is Modi’s India where Hindutva remains the key agenda (largely reflected by New Delhi’s deafening silence on the viral footage), anything distasteful is possible. May it be the deplorable tightening of administrative screws in illegally occupied Kashmir valley, brutal eviction drive in Assam, or Karnataka’s notorious “forced conversions bill,” each and every minority appears to be living under the same threat. It is only the intensity of the suffering that is touching unbearability for Muslims. Their men are routinely harassed, beards set ablaze, and pressurized to chant Hail Ram (often on gunpoint). An unbelievable majority of women steps outside fearing rape threats or abduction attempts. With the online Eid auction of Muslim women, the Love Jihad target on the backs of Muslim boys, and the always-in-vogue cow vigilante violence, the second-largest community in India is paying a very dear price for being born into a faith different from the mainstream.

Friday’s heckling of those praying in the open in Gurgaon-albeit, forced because of an administrative blockage against the further opening of mosques-only feeds into a frenzied outsider narrative where an overwhelming majority refuses to take off the myopically-tainted glasses. The hardliner RSS reigns in glory supreme as gory hate crimes continue under the watch of an oblivious government. India might keep propagating the mantra of unity in diversity but in reality, it has been reduced to a land of intolerance thriving in the cradle of violence. *