Jammu, October 20: Is India growing intolerant? Well if the screaming news headlines and the vociferous TV anchors areto be believed India is going to dogs and the intolerance is eating into its vitals. As if this was not enough these ‘loudspeakers’ have got a shot in the arm by Presidents second reference to intolerance in India within a fortnight saying the government must atleast now wakeup to presidents clarion call and take steps before this nation goes into complete chaos.
The question that comes to mind is whether India was actually growing intolerant and the nation was in a chaos so much so that the democracy was at the brink of disaster?
Well the reality is exactly opposite to that and majority of Indians are going about their daily chores without any fuss and having no idea that something was grossly wrong with the system barring the fact that they are force fed the so called hard reality daily through over enthusiastic newspaper headlines and screaming anchors who want to throw the nation into communal quagmire only to increase their TRPs.
As a common man, one wonders whether the protests of a few persons here or there, throwing of ink on a person who has already committed an offence and usual shutdown in Kashmir over ‘innocent killings’ without actually having any compassion, can be called as nation in chaos?
The shutdowns in Kashmir have been going on for the past two and half decades, ink has been thrown on numerous people, religious sentiments have been whipped up many a times by vested interests and Shiv Sena has long history of not allowing Pakistanis play cricket in Maharashtra as and whenever it suits their political vote bank. Then what new has taken place that the whole bunch of so called intellectuals and other self appointed critics and analysts are crying hoarse all about in a way forcing the president of India to say what usually he would have avoided.
Why was throwing ink on Rasheed so catastrophic that President had to intervene even as such attitude was not shown even by Americans when a shoe was thrown on George W Bush Jr during a press briefing in Iraq on December 14, 2008.
The basic problem with India is that it has to fight the bigger war within rather than with the known enemy on borders as these enemies within are trying hard to destabilize the nation by creating imaginary situations of communalism, intolerance and political chaos to polarize the country and reap the dividends.
If one man offends the minority by throwing a beef party and the former Chief Minister saying that they were in majority and would decide what to eat then how come Haryana Chief Minister can be mauled for saying you can survive without eating beef in Haryana where the Assembly has banned it and Hindus are in majority.
With same logic why is there a hue and cry over the beef issue little caring that India was a Hindu majority nation and holy Navratars were in progress and the discussion could have been avoided for some time if at all these so called analysts were so concerned over the growing intolerance and religious sentiments of the people.
The fact is that in India Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and all other communities are living harmoniously with each other but are forced to think otherwise by these so called columnists, writers and pseudo secularists who create a wedge between the communities through their biased logic to settle the scores with politicians.
As Indians we have been facing such small skirmishes with each other for long and which is a norm in every big family and we have also been settling it ourselves provided these vested interests allow us to coexist humanly and don’t make us cannon fodder for their political arsenal.