EDITORIAL

India’s Tryst with Destiny – Hindu Rashtra

Punjab Today

Punjab Today

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Today marks the culmination of the transformation of India into its destiny as a Hindu Rashtra.

MOST of us know the speech Jawaharlal Nehru made on the midnight of August 14, 1947, ‘Tryst with destiny…’ For decades, this speech has guided and inspired the second most populous and perhaps the most religiously and culturally diverse nation in the world to persist with democracy and equality of all its citizens.

Mesmerised by these words, what we all forgot is that when Nehru made this speech, he was figuratively drowning in the blood of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh refugees from the Partition of India and Pakistan, in Punjab and Bengal.

Finally, after 73 years, we now see that blood was thicker than words. The right-wing forces in India have prevailed. Whether it was through the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which the Supreme Court quite vacuously still terms as illegal or today the consecration of the temple at the supposed birthplace of the mythical Lord Ram, India will declare today that it is unambiguously a Hindu nation, a Hindu Rashtra.

India has an 83 per cent Hindu population. They are the majority. Today they will assert that they are the dominant citizens of the nation. The minorities will continue to exist, but will be threatened, and whenever push comes to shove, the Hindu will prevail.

Diverse India is an ocean with many rivers of history flowing into it. Most of those discourses are tilted in favour of the one who is telling the story – class, caste, religion, gender and so on. A good student of history needs to mark the dates on the timeline to derive her own sense of history.

The right wing Hindutva project of the nation has always been an attempt to rewrite India’s history – change its dates. Just like no one knows when Lord Ram was born, but Hindutva is sure where he was born, they also chose December 6, 1992 for a particular reason.

It was the death anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution. Once the Babri Majid was demolished, the date on which it was demolished will remain etched in the consciousness of the people eclipsing the fact that Ambedkar too died on that day in 1956.

The question is why is August 5, 2020 chosen as the date for the Bhumi Pujan of the temple? That too when we are in the midst of the worldwide pandemic and it is clear now that we are on the path of becoming the most affected country.

The reason is because last year, on this day, in a grave error of judgement, the government abrogated Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. It broke the state into two parts and reduced them to union territories.

The government followed up its actions by putting all political leaders in house arrest, using immense security force to clamp down on the valley, until date there is no peace in the region. The incidences of militancy have gone on, the people have suffered, the disenchantment with India has grown.

While BJP is busy changing the demography of the region, since India reneged on previous treaties on Kashmir, now when China has taken over Indian territory, India cannot even go to the world to complain about incursion. The move has been a grand failure, its cost too high, and now the right wing wants to erase that history by making today the date when they changed India.

This is the myopic nature of the present dispensation in India.

The most revealing of all these developments is that almost the entire opposition, led by Congress, has succumbed to the Ram Mandir narrative. The political parties are now trying hard to find some space for themselves by supporting the Ram Mandir. In the process, they have turned their back not only on the people of India but also the Constitution of India.

It shows us that these political party were never really committed to the ideals of secularism that Nehru believed would be our destiny. Unknown to us, our destiny has always had a right wing bias. They have believed more in the power of mythology than in their own power to script their destiny.

This day will forever be remembered when the people’s representatives betrayed the plurality of the nation, the sense of equality of its citizens, in favour of one majority group – the Hindus. Today marks the culmination of the transformation of India into its destiny as a Hindu Rashtra.

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Also Read:

Democracy is not for rewriting History

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Sikhs and Ram Janam Bhoomi

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Punjab Today

Punjab Today

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