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Communal Harmony starts with you

Charity begins at home, and so does communal harmony. So it’s better to start with yourself. Before you point out at others for damaging the existing communal harmony, pause to introspect if your thoughts and actions are concurrent. Being communal doesn’t always necessarily mean pulling the dagger or splitting the other into pieces. To kill others’ idea of religion by imposing your religion on theirs’ is also a form of communalism, a more subtle one indeed.

So, whenever you come across any content that incites violence on communal lines, use your thinking prowess before jumping into conclusions and sharing it with your people. If you really advocate communal harmony then first stop supporting those people who are luring others into your religion by offering perks of equality and livelihood. Stop posting on the wall of your social media about which great personality praised your religion. Stop sharing about who got converted to your religion at the peak of their career or how following your religion led to happy life of some Mr. X.

Prima facie all this may seem to be a very casual day to day thing. But if you observe, such posts eventually lead to war of words. The people start posting counter views and memes. This may not always lead to any visible harm or immediate outbreak of any riots, although it has potential to do so, but it definitely causes some invisible damage. In the quest to prove your religion as the superior one, you demean the other and thus the fault line between us further deepens. What is even dangerous is such alterations are widespread and are far reaching, both in terms of geography and impact.

To put it in a nutshell, one must treat her religion as private as her sex life. And instead of delegitimising other religions, start taking a stand against the people of one’s own religion who incite violence and defy human rights under the garb of some “external force”. Else, you are latently contributing to the growing divide among the communities. Juxtaposing won’t enable anyone a higher moral ground either to blame or to fight against the communal forces.

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