The increasing religious and
racial radicalism is surprisingly omnipresent. USA has underlying
racism against African Americans and people in Turbans or Burkas.
Australia closely follows the same lines. And in India, every
religion seems to have a pact with every other religion for promised
hatred, a policy of zero tolerance, and a
if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us psyche. With the intolerance
taking on an increasingly violent streak by the day (on a scale of
go-back-where-you-came-from to IS), what is the solution for peaceful
co-existence? Succumbing to their radical and political agendas would
ensure that countries currently identified by their geographic
location or names would be identified as a house for one religion,
and one religion alone.
People in the United States
have declared on more than one occasion that they are a Christian
nation and that's how it should be. The outpouring support for Kim
Davis indicates much the same. People in Iraq have declared that it
is a Muslim nation. The IS extorting special taxes from Christians
living in the state under the pretext of doing do on the commands of
the Koran has no other denotation. And people in India have declared
on more than one occasion that India is to be a Hindu state where
any other religion and any non-regional languages are to be opposed
for the fear that "Westernization" may cause "Cultural
Pollution" which will eventually require "Cultural
Purification". However, the grounds on which the term 'Cultural
Pollution' has been coined
screams hypocrisy. Those who oppose English-medium education very
willingly learnt Hindi when their regional languages were not
sufficient to survive. Those who are opposing the meat ban during the
Jain festival never protested the permanent ban on beef; the
government dictating the kitchens of a common man in both scenarios.
The IS propagates that no
Muslim has the right to question the word of Allah or that of his
followers. Doing so is committing apostasy punishable by death.
Radical Hinduism seems not too far away with the Kalburgi death and
the Bhagwan death threat.
This severe animosity is
springing from deep rooted insecurities. For centuries, the whole
identity of a frighteningly large number of people has lied in their
'culture',
limited to their religion,
language, geographic location, clothing and a few others
as opposed to intellectual identities. With time, Globalization has
performed the role of a bag of scrabble tiles. While a small world is
welcome to some, the others fear for the safety of their own
thoughts. The small percentage for whom identity is a function of
their intellectual potential, are like a breath of fresh air in the
middle of a busy Delhi street in June, but David and Goliath was just
a story when the context is 21st
century violence.
"Where
the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
I'm
sorry Mr. Tagore. Father didn't hear you.
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