By Ankit Sharma
The peace between India’s two largest communities exists on fragile ground. This fragile ground has been created by a number of factors, magnanimity and general tolerance of its majority, an incorrect reading of our history, a grudging acceptance of the presence of the “perceived others”, working relationships the two communities have developed because of socio-economic reasons and a secular constitution dishonestly imposed on Hindus, to name a few. Cementing this fragile ground with the hope that it will become stronger and result in permanent peace, by way of inane contrivances like the latest Tanishq ad campaign is wishful thinking.
From Mohandas to Modi and from Mohan Bhagwat to creatives teams at the ad agency behind the campaign, and honchos at Tanishq, everyone has indulged in it. Distrust between the two communities is a malignancy that refuses to go but our doctors have got the prescription wrong, all along. They continue to treat the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause. Peace cannot be built on the foundations of falsehood. Instead, such self-serving and dishonest means to achieve peace results in greater acrimony and a widening chasm. This is virtually rubbing salt in the wounds.
Any Hindu who sincerely pursues the path of truth long enough would sooner or later realize this. That he remains a ‘kafir’ and ‘mushrik’ never truly deserving of equal respect in the Islamic world view. In the same way any Muslim who sincerely pursues the path of peace long enough would realize this: that being true to ‘the book’ will stop him from being a kafir’s well-wisher, in thoughts and deeds.
This is not to say that honest and beautiful relationships cannot exist between individuals from the two communities. They do and they can but it requires great personal initiative. It requires the Hindu to forget the ‘Hindu holocaust’ of the past, ignore the overwhelming evidence of violence, even in current times. It would also require the Muslim to dilute his stated belief in ‘the book’ and shun some of its core precepts, and run the risk of being termed an apostate. The prescriptions of peace have failed miserably because they have focused on the former while totally ignoring the latter, and with no onus of sane conduct placed on its largest minority.
India will not achieve internal peace if a majority of its stakeholders i.e. the Hindus continue to get an unfair treatment and are relegated to second class citizen status. And if its minorities obstinately continue to be irreconcilable with the Hindu mainstream. Dwell on this for a moment. Because ignoring this reality would result in untold misery and strife, and leaving a society unsafe for our future generations.
Can we achieve something lasting and substantial? Is there a bitter pill, which, taken long enough will cure this malignancy? I think so. To my mind they are succinctly stated as follows:
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- Let the reality of partition reflect in the constitution, by dropping the word ‘secular’ and according to the Hindus constitutional recognition as first among equals among all the communities.
- Affirmative actions and policy measures to ensure that civilizational damage of a millennium is undone by restoring the civilisational vestiges like temples to their former glory, giving Sanskrit a preeminent status, and other such measures.
- Zero tolerance towards conversions.
- Population control measures to ensure that demographics cannot be altered for achieving political ends.
- Reserving the electoral constituencies for Hindus to ensure that rank political appeasement of minorities stops.
This is a “five village” compromise that every Hindu should demand, else we are doomed to a bleak future of continuous strife. Only a confident Hindu India can ensure lasting peace among its constituents and safety of its minorities in true Indic tradition. Secularism would always under-deliver. Ignore this reality at your own peril.
Ending with a quote from the great poet Rabindranath Tagore:
“Throughout India we allowed idiocy to rule and surrender ourselves to it. That kingdom of idiocy–the fatal lack of commonsense–was continuously invaded by the Pathans, sometimes by the Mughols and sometimes by the British. From outside we can only see the torture done by them, but they are only the tools of torture, not really the cause. The real reason of the torture is our lack of common sense and our idiocy, which is responsible for our sufferings. So we have to fight this idiocy that divided the Hindus and imposed slavery on us… If we only think about the torture we will not find any solution. But if we can get rid of our idiocy, the tyrants will surrender to us.”~ Tagore, in ‘Samasya’ (The Problem), Agrahayan, 1330 Bangabda, in ‘Kalantar’