The views expressed herewith are personal in capacity and can be plainly disregarded if considered divorced from the truth.
Matters of faith have been, are and shall continue to be matters of life and death for the myriads that abound the length and breadth of not just our great nation but the many more tribes of humanity that have divided themselves on the basis of region, ethnicity, tongues and ties.
A walk through the annals of history shall reveal the gut-wrenching barbarism that humanity has endured in the name of religion since time immemorial, leaving one with no doubt about the recesses mankind can stoop to in order to uphold the tenets of what they staunchly and unwaveringly believe to be the essence of all that exists.
The counter questions that hence need some answering are :
Were we EVER truly and wholeheartedly accepting of interfaith love and marriage?
Were we EVER secular in the truest sense of the word or was there a perennial divide between the pen and the spirit?
The vitriol that the ad has garnered is a mere and I believe a very unfortunate representation of the deep divide that always existed in our hearts and minds that has merely been accentuated in the more recent of times; thanks to a never-ending barrage of hate-spewing that ensues every night on prime time, finally giving the IDIOT box its names worth.
I hold myself equally if not more responsible for falling prey to the shenanigans of these hate-mongers in moments of weakness.
The tragic truth is that once the flames of fanaticism have been ignited, there is not much that can be done to quell what is bound to follow i.e., strife and hardship on a scale unprecedented. No amount of appealing to the logic, the saner side, the higher, the nobler instincts in man shall thus come to any avail.
This, my dear friend, is a bitter pill. Swallow it.