AS INDIA LOSES IT'S SOUL

Today's India is a breeding ground of Islamophobia, religious intolerance, communal hatred and mob lynchings . We are dealing with two crisis simultaneously- one which will result in physical deaths and the other which entails the deaths of our morals and humanity as a nation.Watching the news (actual news that is not sponsored by the states spokespersons) everyday is a painful reminder of the magnitude of our inundating problems, not only the pandemic but also that we have become  a country which has started distinguishing  patients too on the basis  of  religion and caste. When you have read as many dystopian books as I have you understand that in case of an apocalyptic situation, it is always the rich who are going to be saved first and the poor will be left to suffer, never did I imagine that we will deny a pregnant woman and her newborn baby medical facilities because she is a Muslim, and we are not even in a full blown apocalypse yet. 

Ever since the advent of a government that is hell bent on creating uniformity -mind you not in everyone's bank balances ,but uniformity of thoughts, ideologies maybe even our favorite color-saffron, I've been equal parts curious and scared to know how is this going to end, if ever.

As an upper caste, Sikh, educated , healthy -generation z child, I never have had to face any kind of discrimination, so in my sheltered naivety I always assumed that this bigoted thinking was something that stems from all the old uneducated discriminatory people living in this country, and that once the decision making powers come into the hands of educated and aware people we will change as a country,and finally have a chance of progressing 

And as I said "sheltered naivety"- all those hopes went down the drain when I recently caught up with an old acquaintance right when the jamaat attendees were being tested positive, and she oh -so- casually started describing her hatred for the 200 million or so Muslims in India, laced with several choice profanities , the reason you ask for such unadulterated hatred -"just because", that's when I decided not to even question her anymore since there is no use hitting your head on a stone that has been hardened over the course of several years, with soft hindutva, and baseless theories to further it.

And she is not the only victim of this hate mongering, every fourth post on Facebook is a  propagator of these nefarious schemes .

Moreover these schemes seem to have been working wonderfully in their favor, the shootings that happened when there were peaceful protests happening all over the country against CAA- NRC, were the handiwork of these youngsters, who are the results of unethical journalism, fake propaganda messages and their own idiocy.

Why, if you ask , according to a study by the National Science Foundation- Human Social Dynamics, Netherlands , even psychopaths have the moral compass to tell the difference between right and wrong (it's a different thing that they voluntarily choose to ignore it).And with the introduction of cheap high speed internet in India, the truth and facts of events and matters are only a few clicks away, so if these people truly believe everything fed to them through whats app and other social networking sites, then it is because they want to and the haranguing done by demagogues these  past 6 years have only fueled and polished  their beliefs which they earlier did not have the courage to openly express.

Now when it is an established fact that there are absolutely  no negative repercussions of such public displays , in fact there is a high chance they may be rewarded, it's being done brazenly as we saw in 2018 when junior civil aviation minister- Jayant Sinha garlanded 8 mob lynchers who were out on bail, citing that he was honoring the due process of law, or the statements made by the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh on an everyday basis, showing his immense love for cows and disregard of people or in 2019 when Hindu Mahasabha distributed knives to school going children , to commemorate the birth anniversary of their leader Damodar Savarkar- a man who criticized Gandhi for being concerned about the Indian Muslims .

However, as Julius Caeser said "The die has been cast", we have to live with this governance for the next four years with hopes, and even though they are crashing right now we can either start questioning them and empowering ourselves or watch it play out like a bad dream.