HINDUTAVA OR HINDUSTAANIYAT : THAT IS THE QUESTION

(EXTRACTS FROM A FACEBOOK INTERACTION WITH ADITYA CHAUDHARy ON A REPORT ABOUT A THIRTEEN YEAR OLD HINDU GIRL HIGHLIGHTING THE DANGERS TO OUR COUNTRY AT A MEETING OF THE VISHWA HINDU PARISHAD)


"Communalists can not be your co-religionists or mine. They have a separate religion. The Vishaw Hindu Parishad and the Indian Mujahedeen belong to the same religion of hate. They thrive on each other's success. They can not survive without each other. And they will not hesitate to kill members of their own community if anyone dared oppose this complicity of the killers, or questioned their view of what constitutes loyalty to faith! Scratch a fanatic from any community, and you will find the same skin. They have a genetic inseparability."

Aditya, to get thirteen year old innocent children and poison their minds against their fellow countrymen under the garb of dangers to the country from abroad is a trick not unknown in any religion. All of us – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs etc --have been doing it under different garbs. It is a pity that we give more importance to the ignorant blubbering of an innocent child than to the sober and well considered concerns and opinions of those who are deeply disturbed over dangers of communalism coming from every community.Talibanisation has no religion. There are Taliban among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Christian as much as among Muslims. And lets not use our love for our great country as a shield to cover our communal prejudices.

There is no dearth of people in any community doing just that . My own community also has its share of them. And in a country which is and will always be ruled by the Hindus ( if we start identifying our rulers by the religion or community they belong to ) because of their numerical majority, it looks odd to see some of them complaining of discrimination even as no other community as community has ever got -- or is ever likely to get -- anywhere near ruling this country. But that's the whole point: why must we insist that that should be so when we have enough reasonable people in all communities to rise above their petty communalism and rule or serve this country as Indians. I have my differences with the Congress over their Punjab policy but I would never want to see it replaced by either the Lashakar-e-Ta'aiba or Vishwa Hindu Parishad or Khalistan Tiger Force. If it has to be replaced , it must be replaced by people who love this country more and are more competent to deliver on the mandate they receive from the people. As for he Hindus are concerned, who numerically speaking will always be in a majority naturally, most of them know how to take criticism with grace -- after all, they have all the advantages of numbers, and in a democracy, numbers alone matter, as you will agree. Sadly, though, there are voices -- mostly on the fringe -- who would rather that any voice of dissent is dubbed and condemned as communal and anti-national. I am as much against Hindu Vishwa Pariushad as against any other rabidly communal outfit, but should I be treated as anti-national only when I criticize the VHP, and a nationalist when I criticize similar outfits in other communities?

But you and I must think beyond Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Each one of us must be proud to belong to the culture and religious heritage of our communities but this must never be allowed to come in conflict with our equally sacred pride in being Indians. At the height of terrorism in Punjab, I wrote a piece in the Tribune titled "PROUD TO BE INDIAN;PROUD TO BE SIKH." It naturally came in for bitter and even venomous criticism from the fanatical fringe among both the Hindus and the Sikhs, each one thinking that my pride in anything other than their source of vanity was a sign of "traitor mentality". The Sikh fanatics declared me "Panth da Gaddaar' and the their Hindu counterparts promptly dubbed me "a Khalistani ideologue in the clever garb of a liberal." Thanks to my grounding in my mother's limitlessly liberal legacy, I withstood both -- and even managed to survive long enough to write this today.

Frankly, we can not claim we love our country if we love it less than any other corporate and communal identity. In fact, my mother taught me that it is because of our religion that we love this country more than we love our lives. (And I am not a Hindu, though there is a lot in this religion that I proudly call my own, just as there is in other religions too.)
So cool it, Aditya. Get out of this mindset of Hindus or Sikhs or Muslims being mistreated. Communalists can not be your co-religionists or mine. They have a separate religion. The Vishaw Hindu Parishad and the Indian Mujahedeen belong to the same religion of hate. They thrive on each other's success. They can not survive without each other. And they will not hesitate to kill members of their own community if anyone dared oppose this complicity of the killers, or questioned their view of what constitutes loyalty to faith! Scratch a fanatic from any community, and you will find the same skin. They have a genetic inseparability.

Well, why get upset with the Hindus who do not like communalism in their own community! Then how can we expect secular souls in other communities to oppose fanatics among their ranks !! Sorry but because you are such a decent person, and I really love you for what you are, I must beseech you not to allow this poison to enter your soul.)