It’s the end of 2020 and the end of my tolerance as well, for all the intolerance directed towards my identity of being a Hindu. Like Advocate J Sai Deepak once mentioned in a Q&A session that “Tolerance of intolerance is feeding intolerance.” I also stopped myself from feeding intolerance. It was hard at first to shed off all the lies which perhaps made me who I am today but, it was a dead weight that I was carrying for too long just for the sake of blending in with the people I thought were the ones who’ll sing Saathi hath badana when the time comes for welcoming Ram Lalla. Little did I knew about their progressive thinking which, included cracking jokes about how I should convert to Islam on my preference of eating chicken. I had a joke on my mind as well at that moment but, I refrained from cracking it because clearly, I was the only one tolerant in the room. All of this made me question what even is this secularism that we’re taught.
I was introduced to the Liberal ideology through the LPG chapter which, was taught in our school and the responsibility of being a secular person commenced from childhood because “Ishwar Allah Tero Naam” was chanted almost everywhere (obviously except few places). Remember how in every Bollywood movie or in almost every song by them, we would be given immense knowledge about Hindu-Muslim unity. Thanks to them, I actually believed them without even realizing their ulterior motives. But what happened in the past few years changed my entire perspective towards everything and, I came to realize how even our friends may not be as secular as we are.
So what made me question the word secular was all those real-life events of grooming jihad I witnessed. Moreover, a single moment left me confused about the secular nature of my peers as well. Let me give you the reasons of my Intolerance towards the secular word:
- 1. Grooming Jihad
Let me tell you a short and a real story of a girl and a guy in love. The girl was a Brahmin. The boy was a Muslim. They met each other in college, and the girl was swept off her feet by that gentleman. She was the best girlfriend in the world because she never lied to her boyfriend and always told him everything about the day. In short, she was Preeti to Kabir Singh except, Kabir didn’t have ulterior motives and, this guy did.
I met this couple through my friends, and I was shocked to hear what the girl had to say. She told me how controlling her bf was and how suffocated she feels with him. Then she told me that she attempted suicide because he cheated on her, but she failed to end her life. I still remember the look on her face was absolutely blank while telling me this. It seemed to like she was lost in an abyss. She went on and on about sick she was of him, so I told her the only sensible thing to do is to end all ties with any toxic individual. After this conversation, her bf arrived, and we went out for lunch, six of us together ( one couple and 4 people among which 2 were Muslim girls ). I ordered a chicken burger, and the guy did the same and didn’t even bother asking his GF, So I did. I asked her what she wanted to eat. To this, the guy replied, she’ll take what I’m ordering, but the girl didn’t utter a word. She was completely silent.
So I asked her if she would be comfortable eating a non-veg item and, to this also, her bf replied. He told me, “She will eat chicken.” After this, the girl came to her senses and said, “I am a brahmin, and I don’t eat non-veg.” But the guy wasn’t going to back down. So he told her that she’s a Muslim because she’s with him and then asked her to recite a few phrases. During all of this madness, I looked at my M friend and asked her what he is doing. To which she said, he’s reciting something for converting non-Muslims to Muslims. While I was processing, the girl willingly recited those phrases, and even after that, I didn’t believe what just happened. I was shocked to see all of this. Firstly, I don’t know if there is an actual thing like this to Convert kafirs into a practicing Muslim. Secondly, how can a person be a parrot-like that girl? After this whole Bollywood drama, I stood up, didn’t even wait for my order, and left without even looking back. The very next day, my friend called me up and told me that the same guy was breaking up with his GF and blaming me for this. my only mistake was I told the girl to cut ties and how he could not handle such a girl who questions her guy.
This incident is still fresh in my memory, and when debates about grooming jihad happen anywhere, the first example I think of is this only.
2. Magic of Radical left.
Isn’t social media the best thing ever created? Yes and No. Yes, because you stay connected with your seniors, juniors, or your batchmates from school. We always have a place in our hearts for our school friends, no matter how incompatible you are with one another.
Our seniors influence us in a way no one can. But the ones who are negatively impacting society needs to be called out. I had a senior in school who went to Jamia Milia Islamia to study. And he changed a lot to an extent where he would support the tukde-tukde gang and bash the Hindu identity in every way possible. I forgot to mention that he’s a Hindu. I never knew the power of the radicals. He was an artist but uski shaktiyon ka galat istemaal Hua.
He went on to participate in the Anti- CAA protests and even against scrapping of Article 370. I knew where he must’ve been trained for all of this, and I don’t think I ever want to go to that place. The more my friends leaned towards the left, the more I questioned myself on my own stance.
3. Joke’s on you
If you think you can joke about some asmani kitaab, then you’re morally corrupt, and maybe you’ll get beheaded. Oh! that has already happened. But if you take a joke on how you, a Hindu, should get themselves converted because that’s the new definition of cool, then only you’ll be considered sarcastic or Liberal. Because according to some self-proclaimed scholars, that is who a liberal is, a person without any roots.
It wasn’t a while ago that a former friend of mine cracked a joke of some sort in front of me, he told me, “Bhai, itna chicken khata hi hai, musalman hi bann ja.” Tu pig khale barabar ho jaega. I didn’t say this. I want to live.
The moral of the story is – no matter what you do, how much you tolerate this nonsense, at the end of the day, you’ll be ridiculed based on your identity.
There are incidents similar to the ones mentioned above, but what do I know about the liberal values. Maybe I overthink about what the media is feeding us but shouldn’t we be a bit concerned about what some people, in the name of Bhaichara, feeding us?
Why is it that we wake up one day and find ourselves in a Dharamsankat whether to choose the chalta hai attitude and be accepted or support the truth and ekla Chalo re?
