Never before I was so agitated and felt helpless as today while a bunch bigots had the last laugh in the parliament when a highly communal and discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Bill(CAB) was passed with majority of members present voting in favour of it.
My loyalty to the country has always been under constant scrutiny. But now, I realize that I have to keep all records under my pillow to ensure that the sky above me is mine too.
Umpteen number of times I have come across the oft-quoted words of MS Golwalkar that “They (Muslims) may stay in the country, wholly subordinate in the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment-not even citizen’s rights.” But I never expected, like any other secular-minded Indian, that this ‘Bunch of thoughts’ will, one day, get the constitutional sanction. I have been proven wrong.
I was not born when India was partitioned. But all these years, I was forced to carry the baggage of guilt just because Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, and I belonged to the same religion. I learned about the murder of Mahatma Gandhi from text books and couldn’t fathom the enormity of the crime then.
But I was in the prime of my youth when Babri Masjid was pulled down by the foot soldiers of Hindutva in 1992. I fumed, fretted and felt dejected. However, despite all the mayhem and massacre that followed, my faith in the secular constitution, independent judiciary and a free press remained intact.
But today, my own consciousness is doubtful about the faith in the system. All our constitutional heads of the country belong to the same fold of people who are proud of their Sangh legacy. All the constitutional institutions are anchored by the stooges of divisive forces. A systemic rot has weakened the press and the judiciary.
I had often wondered how the RSS could survive the backlash after Gandhi’s murder. But tumultuous events in the last two decades taught me how brutal the Sangh can be. Well-organized massacres of 1980s, demolition of Babri Masjid, Mumbai and Gujarat riots, scores of stage-managed encounter killings, crippling of Art 370 and now CAB- they effortlessly sailed through the quagmire by deception and unadulterated lies.
Now, the home minister assures me saying “There is no need for Indian Muslims to live in fear. India has given respect to its Muslim population. This bill does not discriminate against them.”
I am not so naive to believe a person who has lied in Parliament on multiple occasions, most recently on the detention of former Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah. While he was kept under illegal detention, the home minister lied to the House that Abdullah was free to go wherever he wanted.
The saner voices assure me that CAB won’t survive judicial scrutiny. But for those who have least regard for the law, legal sanction is just a technicality.
Though my faith in the system is fast eroding, I still believe in the great pluralistic tradition of my country which has survived all the onslaughts in past. But I must admit that the forced feeling of ‘otherness’ has left a deep scar in my mind and it’s deeply hurting.