Why I am not a Hindu

Recent incidences of violence, in India, have left me shattered and filled me with shame. While my conscience is clear and the stand of my immediate family (I say immediate family because there are “Sanghis” in my family too) is a balanced one, it is a fact that a rank outsider may very well, judge me just on the fact that I am a Hindu.

I am not a Hindu, I do not want to be a Hindu; me being a Hindu is just a birth lottery, an event on which I had zero control.

Looking at my nation today, I have every reason to feel ashamed of being a Hindu.

I am tired of the endless questions, challenges and justifications that keep pouring with alarming frequency and with increasing absurdity. It appears that the only arsenal left in this argument is to present yourself so absolutely irrational, that a counter-argument is just not possible, to even form, let alone be taken to fruition.

Life should be defined “in the now”. Your life is what you are living right now. The acts that you commit, has an impact on your life and the lives of others, depending on the influence you wield, in the present, and in many instances how the future acts are shaped.

Remember your history, else you will have to repeat it is indeed a strong guiding principle if and only if this is practiced towards making a better present and a more meaningful future. If we are going to remember history with a singular purpose of exacting revenge, right the (perceived and real) wrongs and to shape or alter it to fit our narrative to achieve our end goal, it is meaningless to me. I would rather forget my history, not care to even understand who killed who, when, how many, how and so on.

The current state of lawlessness and the brazen display of the “who-can-touch-me” attitude being put on clearly for the world to see is alarming and disgusting in equal measure. Each election is fought on divisive platforms. It is always putting one against the other. Not economy, not improvements, not employments, not infrastructure, not agriculture. Just a simple brutal one vs another. Hindu Muslim sits at the very top. Followed by, upper-caste vs lower caste, lower caster vs scheduled castes, scheduled castes vs tribal, farmer vs city dweller, people marked with their ethnography, where they hail from, what they eat, …. Not one issue worth it's salt. When I watch such election rallies and the issues on which the elections are fought, I am left dumbstruck. That people would not cringe uttering such sheer lunatic ramblings stun me.

Politics has become a four-letter word, not just in India, but the world over, thanks to the rise of right-wing nationalism, slowly and steadily. Like every known form of cancer. And as in cancer, there is no cure. While every party is deplorable, with its myopia and self-serving agenda, my greatest regret, anger, fury, disgust, helplessness, frustration and total disrespect is reserved entirely towards one party.

The BJP.

Founded on the distorted ideologies of RSS and been in the sidelines of the political field for long periods, the bigot filled party rose on the Hindu Muslim agenda and rode to power. The mothership, RSS itself is an aberration and would have been banned in any country that values human lives and morals. RSS had been banned in India on more than one occasion. But, like a weed that keeps sprouting in your garden, parasitically sucking the nutrients of the other plants, killing them in the long run, the organization which is an insult to any human being with a modicum of intelligence and self-respect kept coming back to life. Like the patch of the garden that is not attended to in time, the few saplings of weed had grown and engulfed the entire garden, leaving the place only for the Lotus!

The rise of BJP, and the associated Hindutva, is not so much an accomplishment of its own. It is more a degeneration of the only meaningful opponent it ever had, the Indian National Congress. The Congress party that fought for the freedom, that stood for secularism lost its mantle, the meaning, and character, gradually, steadily over a long-drawn period. The initial euphoria of freedom soon died, and the slow and steady decline of congress had many reasons. I am listing here the important ones in my reckoning

·       Socialism (instead of competitive capitalism, this defeated all the good intentions and gave a false sense of security and encouraged protectionism while the world was growing rapidly)

·       Bureaucracy

·       Nepotism – (Converting Congress into a Gandhi-Nehru dynasty)

·       Corruption

·       Pseudo-secularism (If the BJP, my main target in this blog is guilty of blatant Hindutva, Congress encouraged selective appeasement with only the vote bank in mind)

·       Complacency

Even the brilliant turnaround of the flailing Indian economy engineered by the eminent stalwarts like Manmohan Singh and Ahluwalia under the helm of the most underrated, unacknowledged Prime Minister of India, P V Narasimha Rao, could not save the congress from the eventual capitulation. As the Congress party failed to control nepotism (Robert Vadra, just the tip of an enormous iceberg, that sank the Titanic called Congress) and rampant corruption, even an unblemished, beyond reproach Mr. Singh could not save the congress. When the need of the hour was for a leader of excellent leadership and spotless track record, all they could come up with was, a Rahul Gandhi. A man so unbelievably asinine, even a scripted role of a village idiot would fail against him. It is like the slaves languishing under the Pharaoh waiting for their messiah to get a clown who hopes to entertain them with an inept act of juggling.

The less said about him, the better.

The British ruled India for upwards of 200 years. This came to pass, among other things, mainly due to a singular fact – lack of unity between many warring factions. Brits found this a fertile ground and invented divide and rule.

BJP, in the 21^st century was offered the same conditions to flourish, on a silver platter with watercresses around it (as PG Wodehouse would have said), by various regional parties who could not muster up a nationwide opposition or a combined party of any substance. The communist party ruled just two states, the regional parties ruled many states and the only meaningful opposition, if one could call the crumbling Congress that, was Congress. Congress was no match to BJP at this stage. And predictably the Congress was routed in two successive elections and the nemesis of India, the BJP stormed to power. The reason I hate BJP is it is communal and divisive. Among the many arsenals of the BJP, its topmost strengths(!) are

·               It lies – unashamedly, brazenly, with not a care about any documented              evidence

·                Rules through fear

·                Has no morals

·                Anti-Muslim

Let us go over them one by one.

Lies:

No other organization or its leaders lie as much as BJP or Narendra Modi does. And the sheer hypocrisy is even more stunning. They have at their disposal, a great army of IT cell operators, their rabid followers (called Bhakts in India – meaning an obedient and blind follower) and bought media to propagate and foster their lies. BJP has taken lying as an art to a level till date never experienced. Normal people care a little while lying as there is no shame greater than to be caught having lied. People in public light are expected to be extra vigilant, simply because they are in the public light. In today’s digital world, everything you ever said is captured somewhere and stored for eternity. It does not take too long to reproduce what someone said on some topic at any given point in time.

Election manifesto as a form of a lie is not relevant anymore. No one takes promises made in election manifesto seriously anymore. (It is however, worth reminding here, that BJP had gone on and implemented most of their farfetched fanatical commitments made, very much similar to Hitler and Mein Kempf; no one took them seriously and by the time they did, it was already too late) What makes BJP stand apart is their brazenness in lying after the elections. They lie so openly and confidently, that an ordinary guy who would like to question pauses to think, along these lines,” if he is saying so confidently, would he be lying”.

George Orwell gave the world a completely new set of vocabulary with his seminal work of dystopia “1984” and the most telling of them is doublespeak. If someone had perfected the art of doublespeak, it is BJP. They would win all the awards by a huge margin if there were to be a competition on doublespeak. Claim that they do not differentiate based on religion and implement a draconian law that excludes one religion. Claim that they encourage dissent and transfer every official who does that. Claim that they encourage dissent and quell the same with a ruthlessness that is outright scary. Which government unleashes its own police force to squash a student unrest? I had once mentioned in an earlier blogpost of mine, that India is the only country where people are scared when a policeman approaches them. It is still true. When police force with such a reputation is given carte blanche, chaos follows every single time. (On an unrelated note, the police killed four rape accused in a staged encounter after yet another brutal rape. People celebrated and even garlanded the cops. The judiciary ordered an inquiry commission, and no one remembers it now (just 4 months ago) as the country is now under the grip of the Citizenship act and the pogrom that is ensuing)

Keep the people confused is their mantra. The recent case of Modi and Shah’s stand on NRC is a sterling example.

(For those who do not follow Hindi, the prime minister says that he or his government never even discussed NRC while his right-hand man, the home minister says NRC will come, not just in Assam but all over India)

A sample is enough here as more eminent people like Krish Ashok, Varun Grover, Sayantan Ghosh, Ujval and Rana Ayub have exposed the lies of these two leaders (!) on numerous occasions.

Rules through fear:

What is indisputable today about India is that there is a palpable sense of fear permeating every aspect of society. Walls have ears is suddenly becoming a frightening reality. People are afraid to speak out. Because if they do, they are hounded. Trolled mercilessly online, targeted viciously, harmed physically and subjected to every scrutiny possible under various departments at the disposal of the government. Few celebrities in the past spoke about this “climate of fear” and paid a heavy price. Their films were boycotted, they and their families were harassed, effigies were burnt, their loyalty questioned, and they were given the extreme ultimatum by the Bhakts and the government – in India, it is “Go to Pakistan”. Anyone who questions them must leave India. The discord is so deeply rooted in India, that if you were to ask a school going child “What is the opposite of India”, chances are the child will answer “Pakistan”.

As Ramachandra Guha pointed out recently, the institutes that are meant to be independent and autonomous have all been compromised and they live today in constant fear of the government and toe their line. The institutes in question are, not exhaustive but representative of the rot that had set in, the judiciary, the army, the police force, the election commission, the media and the RBI (Reserve bank of India). When these institutes, who can check an irresponsible government, are kept on a tight leash, what hopes can a common man nurture? A stray, honest officer who breaks the line is immediately transferred or arrested under seditious acts that give the police the privilege to detain him/her endlessly without providing a reason.

Of all the compromised institutions, no one can hold a candle to the media. Arnab Goswami is an insult to a human being!

Industrialists or public figures who dare to question the government are hounded by a battery of institutions, like the income tax, foreign exchange regulatory, excise evasion, disproportionate asset inquiry ….

Rahul Bajaj, Naseeruddin Shah, Amir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan are some of the names that come to mind who spoke up and paid a price. (or still paying a price)

Another great weapon they have recently discovered, and are putting to great use, is ban the internet! They do it so regularly that it has become a norm now than an exception.

Has no morals:

·                   Sadhvi Pragya – terror accused – Member of Parliament

·             Kuldeep Singh Sengar – Member of parliament convicted of rape, murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation.

·               Kapil Mishra – MLA – singularly to be held responsible for the current crisis in Delhi which saw the worst unrest that had claimed 38 lives (and counting)

·             Yogi Adityanath – Hindutva Chief Minister of UP, a state where police brutality has made even the Indian population go numb with disbelief, who also made a speech during the recently concluded Delhi election in which he said “If they do not understand words, they will understand bullets”

·        Anurag Thakur – A minister of State, no less. Who recently encouraged (a euphemism for whipping them to a blind frenzy) a congregation of Bhakts to chant “Shoot the traitors”

·            Amit Shah – Home Minister – Investigated for murder

·         Narendra Modi – During 2002 Gujrat riots made the remark “Newton’s third law – every action has a reaction” to stand mute to state-sponsored terrorism, an act that was so widely condemned that he was not sanctioned a US visa for years. (It is a different story now, that he is the PM and he has so many similarities with Donald Trump, that he is not only granted the elusive visa (a prized possession for any self-respecting Gujarati) but he had been given rousing receptions a few times already.

All of them are free and roaming around poisoning the nation.

In fact, the whole BJP party reads like the ready reckoner to the vilest assembly of people. Their leaders continuously insult known icons, historical and contemporary, blatantly flout norms and act as if (they are right here) they are above law.

There is an Indian saying that goes “Yata Raja, tata Praja” meaning the people will be like their king, in behavior. BJP is the modern-day explanation or a case in point to this saying.

The prime minister, a regular on Twitter (not so much like Donald Trump, but let us say he would measure a 0.65 DT on a Donald trump Twitter activity scale) who tweets on almost all national and international events, be it an Oscar win, a cricket match, a wrestler bagging gold, a child enacting a Babri-Masjid demolition in a school play chooses to keep quiet when students are targeted and brutalized inside college campuses when the country’s capital burns when his ministers and the members of the party say all those atrocious things (Godse was a true patriot, Nehru was a womanizer, Give me three days and ask the police to look the other way and I will clean India of Muslims…)

Anti-Muslim:

Unlike the previous three strengths (!) of BJP, this one needs no elaboration. It is clear. Crystal clear as Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men!

Every single act that they commit, every act they implement, every step they take is rooted only in one agenda. How to fuck a Muslim. Where this deep-rooted bigotry stemmed from is no secret. Their ideology is shaped by the RSS, the parent organization that had called for a Hindu Rashtra even before independence. What is surprising is that a human being is capable of this much hatred can be nurtured with apparently no end to the appetite whatsoever. As some of their party members repeatedly proclaim, “we shall rest only when the last termite / vermin are thrown out”, probably they would rest only when India is free of the Muslim population. The catch here is where will be they be thrown out? To which nation can they possibly go? Thanks to the fundamentalists who had taken Jihad to a global terror scale and many misplaced brainwashed morons causing terrible agony the world over, Islamophobia is already an alarming trend. The catch-22 situation is that they have no place to go. Trust the BJP to have an answer for every problem. They are building detention centers across the breadth of the country. I almost cried the other day, when I saw an interview with an illiterate building worker who was employed in building the very detention center. He said, “Probably I would end up here when it is finished, as I have no papers to prove that I am an Indian”. The diabolic NRC would make sure that the undesirables (throwback to 1930s Germany where the undesirables were the Jews, Gypsies, Dwarfs, Homosexuals, the communists…) fail the test. The test is as rigged as a loaded dice. Google “Will you pass the NRC test?” and check for yourself. Once you fail NRC, you are an illegal immigrant. Enter CAA, the mother of all acts, through which you are discarded straight away if you are a Muslim, and your chances are not any to shout from the rooftop, if you are a non-Muslim.

Simply put, the government can simply decide who can stay and who will go? If you had been to Auschwitz, you would have seen the notorious photograph of the German doctor who, with a flick of his hand, sent the prisoners to the left to the labor camp or to the right to the gas chambers. This is exactly the same. An exercise of NRC was carried out in Assam, a north-eastern state with diabolic results. 1.9 million people were left with a tag “illegal immigrant”.

Watch this wonderful video by journalist Rohini Mohan

I gave up on religion long ago, when what I learned overtook the indoctrination that had been imbibed, by well-meaning parents, and proudly embraced rationalism. I refuse to use the term Atheist, as it is coined as an opposite of a theist, I am not non-somebody. I consider myself a rational human being trusting no alter-life or heaven with 72 virgins or a purgatory where you burn forever and after.

BJP made me announce that I do not want to be known as a Hindu, specifically. The term makes me cringe. Trust me when I tell you, that the brainwashed are not just the blind Bhakts or the illiterate masses. Educated people (by education I mean those who have at least graduated, who have access to materials to read, who can shape an opinion on one’s own intelligence) make a sizeable portion of the Bhakt world.

If a Jew recalls a history to settle scores, in the present, with Germans and Arabs, then I do not want to be a Jew.

If a Muslim is going to settle scores with Americans or Hindus by quoting historical aberrations, I do not want to be a Muslim.

If a Hindu refers to Mughals and, by inference, the Muslims and kill people and destroy property, I do not want to be a Hindu.

As a citizen of India, I have the right to demand what is inherently, originally mine. I am asking for that from this bigoted, hate-filled, venom-spewing BJP

“Give my India back and get the hell out of my country!”