Eventually, the bad blood is spilling out. History taught us
the grave consequences of this demon in past. It is apparent that we have not
learnt enough to refrain from indulging into the same mistake what witnessed
bloodshed post partition. The demon of communal riot, time and again, tried to
unleash itself in different parts and it is our heritage, culture and
pluralistic lineage inculcated by our ancestors which kept it in check. The
fact that, we Indians take pride being the largest democracy in the world,
largely contributed by practise of pluralistic coexistence and careful yet
prudent check on this demon for the last 72 long years.
Sporadic eruption of communal disturbance tried to spread
its fangs in different pockets of the country over the period of time, but
could not prevail largely due to mass conscience along with administrative
measures. All these years, from the dawn of independence, there are
individuals, political and religious groups coexisted in our system and tried
to propagate their ideology to invigorate hate and separatism based on
religion. Being proud of one’s own religion is never a bad idea, but demeaning
other religion in order to be boastful of your religion certainly is. No
religion teaches us to do so. From my personal experience, I’ve seen people of
different faith coexisted with great camaraderie in our area where we have
celebrated festivals of all community with equal joyfulness and participation.
Having said that, it cannot be denied that in spite majority of our countrymen
being supportive of communal harmony, there is always palpable insinuation that
not everything is hunky-dory. Backed by the inculcation of misinterpreted ideology
of religious and communal leaders having vested interest of creating unrest and
hate amongst communities and demeaning other communities, thus spreading loathe
across socio economic strata is an undertone cannot be or rather shouldn’t be
overlooked. Commuting on public transport, I’ve observed how people are getting
vocal about a particular community. In
their unequivocal opinion, being minority, this community enjoys all privileges
and benefits of our society, thus should be confiscated of those privileges.
Interestingly, not always, these people are from the lower rung of the society.
On the contrary, most of them, in fact, 90-95% are middle class & so called
‘educated’ people. Daily wagers are probably less bothered of these arguments,
since their struggle for livelihood keep them too tied up for any other
thoughts. Unfortunately, they are the most who suffers and pay the price with
their life and property when riots break out.
Going back, history reveals, always there was section of
people across religion who harnessed this thought of identifying nation based
on religion and believed in its supremacy over humanity. Time and again
political traders, especially politics based on religion card driven this
people like ringmasters and tried fulfilling their vested interest. But good
sense always prevailed and we have, as a country marched on. Unfortunately,
this bad blood never died down and flown as undercurrent in our society which
is spilling out the way what we are experiencing in Delhi North East. When
government administration aided with all resources, directly or indirectly
props up vandalism and anarchy towards any community, things become very grave.
All the bad blood flowing as undertone in the society gets fuelled and
lawlessness becomes law.
Religious extremism combined with ultra-rightist politics, wandering
around our society, always tend to break free and start vandalism at the drop
of a hat. Our democracy, with its pluralistic constitutional base, always kept
these spoilers under check. There is no denying that post independence, riots
on religious disputes broke out number of times, be it in 1967 (Ranchi), Kanpur
(1991), Bombay (1992) or 2002, but the fact that India able to successfully douse
them can be looked upon as the inculcated values of respect to equality towards
all faiths by our forbearers.
With changing time, lots of things are changing. Venom can
be thrown up in the name of freedom of expression / freedom of speech. When system
with its machineries tries to divide communities and start discriminating, then
the entire value system of a nation comes under threat. In order to deflect nation’s
attention from issues like unemployment, health, inflation, infrastructural
development etc., people are pitted against each other in the name of the
religion. Here steps in the religious extremist fraternity from their hibernation,
start influencing their respective community and thus creating social unrest. Social
media, by virtue of its omnipresence adds fuel to the fire. Misrepresentations
of historical events with motivated intentions are being spread. The monster of
communalism, surfacing with its ugly blood licking face trying to reap apart
our country, thanks to a government we have elected democratically!!
With every single day
the image of our democracy, where tolerance to opposition, debate, argument of
opposite thoughts are being looked upon as characteristics, is getting leaner.
Is our democracy so fragile that we cannot withstand and
fight out to save our pluralism?
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