Is Bengal Heading Towards A Genocide?
India, it is
said, lives in her villages. But she can be understood through the slogans that
rents her skies and the way her rulers try to suppress them. In today’s Bengal
saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is like showing a red flag to a bull, or as some might say
in the present times, a cow.
Slogans have led
to many changes in India’s history. They have even led to its vivisection. The
slogan of ‘Vande Mataram’ and the British retribution to it filled Indians with
a yearning for freedom. Some other slogans have led to mass violence and soaked
our land in blood.
All of them without
doubt are linked to memories of a turbulent past that have not found a closure to.
The slogan ‘convert to Islam or leave Kashmir or die’, ‘leave your women behind
to make a new Pakistan’ from the loudspeakers of the mosques in Kashmir made
half a million Hindus leave their homeland and run away to safety. The slogan ‘ladke
lia Pakistan, jitke lenge Hindustan’ in 1947 made Hindus and Sikhs of Pakistan realize
that they were against an enemy who will one day exterminate them.
Slogans have
power to change minds and therefore, the retaliation to it is as brutal as it
can be. For many a paranoid and delusional leaders, it represents a danger to
their power that people are no longer with them.
The slogan of ‘Jai
Shri Ram’ is as old as the Indian civilization itself and rooted in the
identity of India. It is used as a greeting in village corners, your religion
being immaterial. But what is unique today is the reaction of someone in power who
has decided it won’t be allowed to be said anywhere nearby where she goes. She
reacts as the head of a theocratic Islamic state where raising slogans by ‘infidels’
must be punished. Travelling with a cavalcade of policemen, eyes glaring, she stops
whatever she is doing and runs towards the people daring them to say in front
of her. A new role model has arisen on the horizon for all ‘jihadis’ and ‘missionaries’.
Prohibiting
slogans to express your faith is nothing new for Hindus. Mughal emperors prohibited
it though they didn’t get down from their elephants to chase their subjects and
put them in jail. The Christian priests of Goa went a step further. They skinned
the infidels alive who refused.
Today the most
rabid bigoted fanatic may find it unable to match this behavior for sheer madness.
No Zakir Naik, no missionary out to convert Hindus perhaps even thought they
would find such an icon as their messiah. This is an example of a leadership
that will make their task easier. The two hundred men who came in a lorry yesterday
to kill, where is their inspiration coming from? Where is this hatred coming
from? Why is the political getting mixed with the personal in today’s Bengal in
such a diabolical form? A language soaked in violence flows from an elected leader
along with a threat to remain silent? Is it not churning out of hatred against Hindus?
Why is everyone silent? Isn’t this hatred a forerunner of a mass violence that
has been repeated many times in our history? When the cup is filled to the brim
and one more drop falls, doesn’t it overflow?
The Direct Action
day 2019, part two, act one. The blame will be put on Hindutva as usual. They
deserved the killing by raising slogans just like they did in Godhra or in
Kashmir where they took all the jobs away. The script is old and familiar, rotten
with perfection by now and written with changes keeping in mind there is now social
media.
Bengal has survived
many a genocide in the past. Today it is a land soaked in blood. The origin of all
genocide start when the people of a certain faith are thought of as less human and
their faith, their religious practices including slogans as discriminatory. Today
when you can go to jail for saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ but not for saying ‘Allah o Akbar’,
have to defer your immersion for your goddess in the river because it clashes
with another festival, it signifies a society marked by bigotry and hatred for Hindus.
A mass violence or genocide may be only a step away.
The slogan ‘Jai Shri
Ram’ has a rather long and tragic history. There have been times when Hindus
would not dare to raise it for fear of being punished. Not definitely during the
times of Islamic invaders or Mughal emperors. Did they feel like after the Ram Temple
was destroyed by Babur? Even if they could, they probably wouldn’t do it for shame.
My mother tells me that in her home state of Bihar she saw some men raise ‘Jai Shri
Ram’ on Ram Navami going on a road and they were attacked with stones.
If this slogan is
stopped in Bengal, will it not give birth to more fanaticism? Can we learn from
history and choose not to be silent?
In its history
the slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’ never created any war, never asked anyone to convert,
never broke any religious structure, never created any hatred for another. Then
why has it become so threatening? Is the power of this slogan touching a deep
nerve because of a history associated with a million memories?
A few years ago,
in Hong Kong there was a rally for the remembrance of Tiananmen Square victims.
Almost half a million people gathered like they did every year. Next to me was
a young Hong Konger. We exchanged pleasantries and he shared he works in a bank
in mainland China and comes every year on this day.
“Aren’t you
scared?” I asked him.
“I am not,” he
said.
“What gives you
the courage?” I asked.
“Remember the ‘tank
man’,” he said smilingly, “if he, a single man, could stand in front of the
tank then why can’t I, for the sake of freedom of my children?”
Everywhere the
battle for justice, for freedom is between a single person who is opposed by brutal
state power. Like the ‘Tank man’, the men and women who shout slogans in Bengal
do so knowing there lies a retribution that may even lead to death.
The slogan ‘Bharat
tere tukde honge’ told the average Indian that his freedom is fragile and vulnerable
and can be destroyed by enemies within and our nation is encircled by vultures.
That if we don’t protect our freedom today, our religion may become extinct by another
generation.
‘Vande Mataram’
taught us of our spiritual past and gave our shattered race a new identity
after a millennia. The slogan ‘Give me your blood, I will give you freedom’
filled a defeated race with pride to fight the British Empire.
The slogan of ‘Jai
Shri Ram’ may one day too stand out for something far more than a salutation to
Sri Ram and tell the story to our future generations of why Hindus struggled hard
for centuries to uphold their civilization.
Rajat
Mitra
Psychologist
and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
Contact
Book Club of India via following email bookclubofindia@gmail.com for
delivery of overseas orders of the book 'The Infidel Next Door'
The book
is also available at select book stores like Bahrisons.
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