A family doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be united.
India has been a civilization following the principle of inclusion since its origin. Invaders, travellers, and businesspeople came and went, some of them ruled, and others failed, but every faith and culture that came along, either adopted this land or left their marks here, and our beloved soil embraced it with both arms.
Upon the creation of the Republic Of India, these ideas of inclusion were imbibed again into the ethos of our nation. The secular fabric that was stitched by our forefathers, in recent times is being torn apart so badly, that our heads should hang in shame.
Every other day, we read about people being killed on the basis of suspicion or some fanatic giving us lessons of their ‘so’ called Hinduism or ” Indianism” beliefs. It breaks my heart. And moreover, it is appalling to see that the ruling elite is neither condemning nor denying these criminal activities.
Muslims are brutally murdered on the basis of mere suspicion of being involved in cattle smuggling by self-anointed saviours of cows, who have no respect for human life. The zealots didn’t stop here. They didn’t even hesitate to strangle a 20-year old to death.
This urge to serve cows is not the only act of foolishness that has slapped our faces tightly. These religious groups didn’t even hold back from moral policing consenting adults of different faiths from courting or marrying each other or even allowing people of a religion other than their’s to share a neighbourhood with them.
Mohammad Afrazul was burnt to death by Shambhu Lal in the name of ‘love jihad’. I don’t even understand this term. It is so derogatory. In another case, the marriage of a 30-year-old man, Mansoor Harhat Khan and 28-year-old Dr Nupur Singhal was disrupted at a Ghaziabad court, by the goons of the Bajrang Dal and the workers of Bhartiya Janta Party.
The Indian constitution allows consenting adults to marry, regardless of faith and caste. The Indian constitution even endorses inter-caste and interfaith marriages to uphold the integrity of India. So what grounds are these goons using to create havoc and spread terror across the country?
If this was not enough, the residents of a Hindu dominated locality, along with some BJP leaders, shooed a family of the “other” faith out of their own house on the basis of “land jihad”, according to the reports. What kind of circus is this?
At this rate, a Muslim man going to the barber would someday be accused of “shave jihad”, and the act of Muslim children attending schools would someday be called “education jihad”. Yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds and keeping quiet coupled with our government’s inability to shut down these fringe outfits, is ridiculing our constitution even more.
The fringe outfits took out another campaign that questioned whether schools should celebrate or not celebrate “non- Indian” festivals such as Christmas.
Whether you are Christian or not, know everything about Jesus or not or whether you recognize the saint after whom your school had been named or not, everybody loves the spirit of goodwill and love that Christmas brings with itself. So, who are these people? Do they have any right to dictate what we should or should not celebrate?
For the globally accepted calendar, a new year starts on January 1, but some people believe, that the new year should start according to their traditional calendar. But this is India, not North Korea, where citizens live excluded from the rest of the world. Moreover, India has numerous faiths, and their calendars start with different dates, for Zoroastrians, it’s Nawroz, for Muslims it is first of Muharram, and for Hindus, there are too many dates to choose from because every other Hindu civilization has its own New Year.
New Year brings new hope, and as for my own county, I hope that people take notice of their ‘true’ culture as soon as possible. We need to do this before it’s too late and we are crushed under the wreck of our beloved secular nation. Please don’t let the spirit of India die.