It is December 2022, and we are eyeing 2023, and while India appears to have recovered from the wounds of Covid-19, Hindus have yet to recover from the antics of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who rose to the highest democratic office as a result of Gandhi’s (not-so-democratic) favouritism and selection. Associating Nehru with a plethora of ‘Himalayan’ blunders is not a moot point right now, but the elephant in the room here is the cost that we paid because of an ideology that has no ideologues or tenets, other than retaining power at any cost. Whether it’s transforming secularism into minorityism, ignoring the left-handed ‘court’ historians’ narrative that white-washes the Islamic marauders and tyrants, or mollycoddling the Muslim community, the Nehru clan has been running wild and unapologetically. For the past 75 years, Hindus have been relegated to second-class citizens while a special community has been bestowed with a ‘veto’ to run amok and satiate its whims and fancies. Najmul Hoda calls it out succinctly when he says, “India’s Muslims and liberals are withering in each other’s embrace.”
In an article, the same author notes that this type of Nehruvian secularism, or minorityism in general, has been the sine qua non of Indian politics, where political parties would go dog whistling or even rebel-rousing, in exchange for state-sponsored patronage and preference over the Hindu majority. By 1955, Nehru was facing unwavering opposition from the ‘Hindu Right’ over the Hindu Code Bill. J.B. Kripalani was a vociferous dissident of Nehru’s policy on the issue. During a debate on the Hindu Code Bill in Parliament, Kripalani accused Nehru of communalism. He said, “I charge you with communalism because you are bringing forward a law about monogamy only for the Hindu community. Take it from me, the Muslim community is ready for it, but you aren’t brave enough to do it.”
A 15-year-old girl, Prachi Rana, was alone at her home in Pratap Nagar, Tehsil Amb, Una, Himachal Pradesh, when Asif Mohammad, a newspaper vendor, took advantage of the situation and molested her. The tenth-grade student resisted Asif’s sexual violence, which irked the monster, and he slit her throat. He fled the murder spot, and when her mother found Prachi’s dead body, she immediately called the police. As expected, the SP ruled out any religious motive but ultimately caught Asif. However, it remains to be seen if newspapers will cover the molestation and murder case or if she will get justice.
Ahmed Murtaza, a 29-year-old “terrorist,” screamed ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ at the top of his lungs while on a rampage at Gorakhnath temple. It was revealed that he aspired to join ISIS as early as 2016 and even tried to enter Syria through the Middle East. He hails from a highly educated family, with his grandfather being a judge, his uncle a neurosurgeon, and his father coming from a legal background. He himself is a student of one of the country’s finest educational institutions, IIT Bombay. Muskan Khan, a girl student from Karnataka’s Mandya pre-University college, who once created a cacophony about preferring “Hijab over Kitaab,” maintained pin-drop silence later when women in the Islamic Republic of Iran were incarcerated or when the abaya was banned in the Islamic Emirate of Saudi Arabia.
Nisar Ahmed, a teacher at Government Middle School in Khadurian, Rajouri-Jammu and Kashmir, thrashed a girl for coming to school with a ‘tilak’ on her forehead during Navratri. The fourth-grade student suffered severe injuries to her head and was also subjected to abusive, derogatory language from her teacher. The incident continues to remind us of Kashmiri Hindus’ plight since they faced the seventh exodus in the Kashmir valley, which continues to date.
Sabnam and Nadeem, two Instagram influencers, hurled abuses at Hindu women and went on to express their plan to rape them. Nadeem was also recorded stating that he had already carried out the same act on three Hindu women as part of his religious hatred for Hindus. They collectively declared that “Hindus are filth. Hindus must be raped and killed.” This indeed puts an ironic silence on the mouths of so-called feminists and the “liberal” cabal who bashed and sabotaged The Kashmir Files.
The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) corporator Mohammad from Hyderabad, Owaisi’s bastion, was recorded on tape threatening a police officer not to come near his Muslim locality during Ramadan. When he was abusing the policeman, he didn’t wear a skull cap, but when the police van came to arrest the anti-social element, his skull cap magically appeared. It reminds us of a movie star who appeared in a skull cap during his arrest despite rarely wearing it on any occasion.
And recently, Madhu, a 22-year-old Hindu, was stabbed to death by Tauseef and five others in Shivamogga, Karnataka. Shivamogga is the same area where another Hindu youth, Harsha, was brutally murdered by a group of Muslims on the night of February 20. It was the same period when, in Gujarat, Kishan Bharwad was exterminated by Islamists after receiving orders from Pakistani maulvis.
In Rajasthan, Muslims hurled stones from the roof of a mosque and their homes, at Hindus, who were participating in a motorcycle rally to celebrate the Hindu New Year. 42 people, including two policemen, were injured and the properties of many Hindu households were torched by Islamist mobs. Again, the Congress-led state downplayed the violence and blamed Hindus instead of giving them justice. Terrified Hindus put up boards on their now burnt-down shops and houses, saying that they were to be sold as they decided to leave their homes to migrate to a safer place.
The Rajasthan government has ordered the administration to ensure that mosques are supplied with uninterrupted electricity during the month of Ramzan while refusing to take any responsibility for the Karauli anti-Hindu violence. During Ramadan, the AAP-led Delhi government announced that all Muslim government employees would be allowed to leave two hours early. The Andhra Pradesh government, too, declared that Muslim employees of the state government may leave an hour early.
While these steps could have been welcomed, the stark realities of their respective anti-Hindu stances anguish every person who is truly secular at heart. The AAP’s supreme leader recently mocked Kashmiri Hindus’ plight by discrediting The Kashmir Files in Delhi’s Parliament, while YSR Reddy’s anti-Hindu stance has long been known and documented.
It would indeed be naive to consider that these incidents were isolated acts of communal hatred. Asif Mohammad, Ahmed Murtaza, Nisar Ahmed, Sabnam, Nadeem, Muhammad, and Tauseef derive their bigotry and religious hatred for Hindus from a common book, and this fact cannot be suppressed anymore. The mention of the abject gory case of Shraddha Walker being chopped into 35 pieces by a Muslim youth Aftab Amin Poonawalla simmers the blood of every Hindu while sending chills down the spine. Reportedly, Aftab also told investigators that he has trapped 20 more Hindu girls on Bumble and admitted to luring them into romantic relationships. A report by Dainik Jagran quoted a police source as saying that Aftab, during the polygraph test, said that even if he is hanged to death for murdering Shraddha, he would not be sorry since he will be remembered as a hero when he “walks into paradise” and will be offered “Hoors” in “Jannat.”
The panoply of macabre and hideous crimes is myriad and the scope of this article is limited. For seven decades, anti-Hindu genocidal stances have been disguised and discarded under the semblance of secularism, but it is high time that we introspect as a nation. Indeed, Nehru’s “Idea of India” has been sucking and weakening India’s Hindu identity perpetually to aid in the persecution of Hindus to date. He conveniently left Muslim Personal Law untouched while stripping Hindus of their legal rights, thereby creating a logical imbalance in the constitutional provisions. Steven Ian Wilkinson of Yale University notes that the rising ethnic violence in India stems from augmented confessionalism, a specific religion-based power-sharing arrangement in a democracy and that no such arrangement can satisfy the groups and will eventually lead to resentment.
Yuvraj Pokharna is an independent journalist and columnist. He tweets with @pokharnaprince. Views expressed are personal.
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