Now, is not the time to do blame game, bring religion into this crisis, target people because of their belief or any other reason/system they follow which is created by us, humans. We are created equal and should be treated same way.
Honestly, there was no right time and there will be no right time to do this. It’s inhuman, criminal and barbaric, whatever the context maybe.
My family taught me to see every living being as equal, including animals and plants. To extent that unless I went to convent school and was taught about ‘Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai’ I was not knowing that religion existed. We were never made to read our religious texts or follow any rituals. My mother had her beliefs and she practised it in her capacity never letting us dragged into it. We were given freedom to grow up and decide our beliefs ourselves or have no belief at all. Religion was not subject of discussion at our house as humanity was considered more important. My father insisted on tolerance and giving respect to other’s view points as I was always loud about mine, no matter what.
‘Jo words ya feelings tumhe hurt karti hain, wo kabhi kisi aur ko nahi bolte’ Things which you can’t bear or tolerate yourself, don’t say or push on others.- He would say.
For almost 30yrs of my life, I believed this. We never questioned the school which did not allow me to wear Mehndi or Bindi but was perfectly okay with Hijab or salwars being worn by my classmates. Graduating from an Architecture college further enhanced this aspect of ‘equality’ ‘freedom of expression’ ‘idea of India’ and how history and architecture of all other places and cultures outside India were better [This was probably also because I had never read anything till then about India in correct sense].
After working for a decade, I decided to slow down and take a break. First thing I wanted to do was detox and get healthy. All the junk I ate during hostel days in Mumbai and all the torture I did to my body while focusing on work in my growing years at work, was now backfiring.
By that time I had already experimented with Allopathy and Homeopathy. None of it could explained root cause of my problem. Ayurveda was something I decided to go for because my ‘internet gyan‘ concluded that it had no side effects even if you don’t get cured.
Not venturing into details of it but I got answers to all my health issues and they got cured over period of a few months with some tweaks in life style and food habits. Ayurveda made me understand that every human is unique and it’s deep understanding is the only way to be healthy. It teaches you how to listen to your body and act upon it. It teaches you how to remain healthy naturally without supplements.
Why I spoke about Ayurveda, because that was my first move towards understanding of something truly ancient and local about India.
Since Ayurveda goes hand in had with Yoga, I understood some things about meditation as well. Research on Meditation lead me to Sri Sri Ravishankar’s Ashram for a four day residential course at Bengaluru. Those four days brought in lot of positivity in my perspective towards life, world and every thing around me. My visits to ashram became frequent and so was buying more books on Indian history and its culture from Ashram’s book store. I was understanding how dynasties [read leadership] were crucial factor in leading the Rajya or country in right direction and imbibing right culture in its Prajaa or people.
All thanks to Mr Kejriwal, I started getting interested in Indian politics at the same time. I am sure, lot of people like me got interested in Indian politics because of him. For two years, I was a strong follower of Mr Kejriwal. In him I saw that strong, educated, secular, down-to-earth, socialist leader who would take India out of misery of corruption and babu-culture. Some of my friends with prior understanding of Politics did warn me that he is no different from others, just that he has a new approach to enter politics, which I blindly ignored until he made his first coalition Govt in Delhi. Suddenly his fight against corruption irrespective of any political party, now started targeting Modi. He let his govt fall to fight against Modi in Varanasi.
Modi – Whom I admired when I shifted to Ahmedabad in 2004. This was purely because of changes I saw with my eyes in that state since he came to power. In 2004, apart from Mumbai, I guess it was only in Ahmedabad that power supply was uninterrupted and without any fluctuations. LPG cylinder was a phone call away, delivered at your door step within 12hrs and many more of such experiences I had in my short stay of 1.5yrs there. 2002 never bothered me as I was not there and most of locals knew what he did was something any leader with right intensions would have done. Also, I had read/heard about worst riots in my own state UP than what happened in 2002.
So coming back to Mr. Kejrwal. When he started targeting and literally abusing Mr Modi finally forced me to do some counter-reading on Mr. Kejriwal and question my belief in him and Modi. I searched for authors with counter views on both politicians which ‘enlightened‘ me to great extent.
I read so much and most of them were anti-Hindu articles, criticising everything and anything that was Hindu to ensure BJP and RSS remained in bad books of people in general. All articles painted anything positive that BJP/RSS said about Hindus as communal. While anything about other religion, supported by most of other parties was considered ‘cool’ and ‘intellectual’. It did not take too much brains to understand the nexus between propaganda against Hindus – to ensure that Hindus remain in self-doubt and never appreciate or be confident about their belief system. This way they would never support BJP or RSS.
Anyway we the Hindus are mostly not taught anything about our belief systems. PS – There are only few remaining Gurukuls in India which we can count on our fingers tips, and now compare that with Madarsa and Churches who ensure that religion is taught to every child born in their families.
[Another myth I was made to believe in was that Hindus have survived for 1000s of years and there is no threat to Sanatan Dharm. In fact, a little research on history can tell us how many people and land we have lost to Radicals in those 1000s of years purely for their religious expansions. Very recent being Pakistan and Bangladesh which were taken away from us purely on religious grounds. Then Kashmir.]
I never discussed religion, caste etc with anyone. But now, I started engaging people on this topic to verify how right those articles were. I realised everyone knew what was written in Quran or Bible, but my Hindu friends could not even name one spiritual text apart from Geeta which they had never read. So is it important to read these texts? I strongly feel no. As long as you are NOT part of society which is surrounded by people who do read such texts.
Because for those 20-30% or 80% of people, their religion comes first and you and humanity comes next.
In the state of crisis you will be sacrificed first.
Because you don’t believe in their texts, you don’t exist or worst you don’t have right to exist. So your elimination is far more important than their own lives. Yes, people who read such texts and get radicalised do think that their lives can be sacrificed for killing ‘enemies’ ‘kafirs’ while you my friend, will be holding placard of humanity and secularism, they will spit on your face, slit your throat, stab you 400 times and dump you in gutter.
At this point, you will blame govt for law and order. Same govt whom you were lecturing to remain secular and not target people based on their religion. Or worst, same govt you selected because they were secular and hence had to maintain appeasement – you are not priority.
But then it’s too late, not knowing that you are secular Hindu, not knowing that you supported them on insta, FB and twitter, they will look at your religion and spit on you from bus.
With my limited ‘internet gyan‘ again, I understood that cancer cells are produced by our own body due to some malfunctions. We don’t live with it because it’s our own. We treat it first, if it doesn’t work we cut it off. But if it spreads in our entire system, it’s too late. We have no option but to wait for slow painful death, our body being consumed slowly by our own cancer cells.
Religious radicals are cancer cells of our society. If we don’t call them out, they will continue to breed and will eventually kill us. There are ample ways to serve humanity, to prove that we don’t discriminate. Many of us are already doing it. Ample examples from all communities are known to us.
#Secularism unfortunately is not one of them! We don’t have to live with cancer to gain higher moral ground.
Now is the time to call spade a spade.
Now is the time to see things as they are.
Now is the time to do research on who are working for humanity and who ready to die and kill for religion.
Now is the time to save humanity from cancerous humans!
Because if we don’t, humanity will die a slow death of secularism!
Bharat Mata ki Jai.
Jai Hind.
Jai Shri Ram!
