HARD TIMES

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?