Jawayria Malik
These are dark times for India. The carnage in Gujarat, Bapu Gandhi’s home state, in early 2002 and the subsequent landslide victory of Narendra Modi in the elections will spell disaster for our country. The fascist agenda of Hindu fanatics is unlike anything we have experienced in our modern history. After Partition I had thought we would never again experience a similar holocaust. I may be proved wrong. Far from becoming mahaan (great), India is going to dogs, and unless a miracle saves us, the country will break up. It will not be Pakistan or any other foreign power that will destroy us; we will commit hara-kiri” envisaged Khushwant Singh in 2003 in his book “The End of India”.
After 15 years, it can easily be endorsed that ‘yes BJP’s fascist agenda has spelled disaster for Gandhi’s India’. With the rise of Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), comfort and freedom of action for affiliated Hindu extremists groups like Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), Shiv Sena, Vishva Hindu Parsihad (VHP) etc have also increased. Gandhi’s India has turned into “Modi’s fascist India” where intolerance for minorities and some saner elements (who attempt to raise issues related to Hindu extremism) has become a new norm of the Indian Society.
Driven by ultra colours of intolerance, Sangh Parivar proclaims an ideology of “Hindutva or Bhagva” with an agenda of subjugating or driving out Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and other communities. In 2014, Dharm Jagran Smiti (DJS) leader Rajeshwar Singh had threatened to Hinduize India by 2021 by expelling or re-converting Muslims and Christians people.
The hate campaigns are becoming frequent and violent as evident from lynching of Muslims over Beef controversy, blackening the face of Muslim parliamentarians in IOK, desecration of Sikh religious book erupting into widespread unrest in Indian Punjab and violence against Christians and Dalits. Religious minority groups in India are consistently subject to inhuman and intolerant treatment at the hands of growing violent and extremist Hindu majority. Muslims face massacres, Christians are subjected to vandalism of Churches and rape of elderly Nuns, Sikh community is being suppressed in the name of Khalistan etc and denied separate socio-religious status, whereas, Scheduled castes and other communities face different intimidating tactics at the cruel and barbaric hands of upper class Hindus. Violence and denial of constitutional rights are the usual tools with which Indian minorities are preyed by extremist Hindu majority.
BJP and her affiliated organizations and groups are carrying out the threat methodically throughout India. Their violent activities range from sports, arts and cultural shows, religious practices, organized rapes to mutilate social fabric of minorities to academia. Recent victim of this rising tide of Hindu extremism is Priyanika Chopra that has been in the line of fire for his 1st June 2018 episode titled “Blood of Romeo” of ABC TV’s fiction series ‘Quantico’. The episode showed that Chopra’s character (Alex Parrish) thwarts a sabotage plan of terrorists ahead of a summit on Kashmir in New York. Alex Parrish unearths the plan when she notices one of the terrorists wearing a “rudraksha mala” (a Hindu rosary). The episode created fury and outrage in India as hard-line Hindu extremists launched scathing protests against Ms Priyanka Chopra calling her “a traitor”. Earlier, these Hindu hardliners had criticized her for visiting “Rohingya Muslims” during her visit to Bangladesh as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
Ms Chopra was trolled on Twitter following broadcast in addition to a street protest held in New Delhi by Hindu Sena demanding that she be sent to Pakistan as a punishment. Tweets strongly condemning her included “Sellouts like her are an insult to India. She consciously consented for the act. Shame”, “The government should cancel passport and should not allow her to enter our nation… Let her stay in Hollywood & lick Pakistan boots. Traitor” etc.
Indian Media as usual became frantic and projected that Priyanka Chopra had “insulted India” by denigrating Rudraksha (the symbol of Hindu prayers) and portraying Hindus as terrorists to project it as a “false flag operation by Indian nationalists hoping to frame Pakistan in a mushroom cloud”. Amid this scenario, a Hindu extremist country in a progressing region poses serious threat and challenge to the regional peace and security. As hundreds of fictional plots are generated by the movie and television industry around the globe every day but only in India is the patriotism of an actor questioned. International community should end its slumber and remain cautious for another kind of looming threat in shape of Hindu fanaticism. It should be understood that any kind of support to India will be inadvertent support for Hindu extremism. The world cannot afford rise of another ISIS of its own kind. The evolving situation has exposed the real face of India to the world. International Players need to take cognizance of the situation and initiate measures to control “Hindu extremism” as a potent threat to the peace, stability and progress of the region. Otherwise, India is likely to emerge as unmatchable threat to the global security due to ever increasing power of fanatic Hindus.
