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Social Hostility In Yuletide
Times: India Courts Shame
Sach Kanwal
Singh
 At times,
poignancy of simple, human actions denotes feelings, emotions and
perspectives much larger than any one action can bring out. Little
Sikh kids holding candles earlier this month near the Gurdwara
Sahib, Fremont, the Sikh youth engaging the world at some of most
exciting places for battle of ideas, be its Berkeley or Harvard,
Jarnail Singh throwing a shoe at the face of Indian establishment,
they all said the same thing.
If India was
dumb at reading it, the world was not so. When all across the world,
the spirit of Yuletide is at work, taking away some of the recession
worries, shame has come visiting India, and it is cowering to find a
hiding place. The Washington-based much respected Pew Research
Center has said that social hostility in India is so intense that
the country figures only below Iraq. Even Saudi Arabia and
Afghanistan fared better than India in the study titled `Global
Restrictions on Religion’ that took into account the situation in as
many as 198 countries.
Sikhs in 1984
and the complete lack of justice after that, the killings of Muslims
in Gujarat, the assaults on Christians, and the marginalization of
the people of the northeast have long convinced the minorities that
the social hostility in India has the blessings of the government.
But now,
New Delhi
has gotten a slap in the face from an intellectually giant
institute.
The Pew Research
Center study comes at a time when new forms of hatred are being
peddled by India’s right wing politics. The RSS is talking of making
the entire country ‘Sanghmayee’ and its chief Mohan Bhagwat is
openly claiming that anyone who lives in India is a Hindu, and will
have to identify himself as such.
For good
measure, the saffron lobby has dragged even love into it. A whole
new bogey of Love Jihad is being raised. It has listed the new
terror items which is making, as per the saffronites, Hindu boys
trembling with fear and Hindu girls weak in the knees: pricey sun
glasses, flashy mobile phones, shiny i-pods, swanky mobikes, and
lustful boys. Just how deeply entrenched the hatred agenda can reach
is clear from one reading of the special report in this issue of the
World Sikh News.
As for Punjab,
just read Amrik Singh Sacramento’s detailed analysis of how our Sikh
as well as Hindu politicians slip for small gains and narrow
interests, upping social hostility levels to such an extent that a
majority community wants to completely sublimate the minorities.
In times like
this, India tilts the way the power does. So it enters into a
deep-rooted conspiracy, turns its back on the poor nations of the
world, and makes the final shift, shunning G-77 to identify itself
with the rich and the elite. At
Copenhagen,
as you will read in a special report on page 15 inside,
New Delhi’s
role has been so negative that the country will fall in the eyes of
some of the bravest little nations which have refused to be cowed
down even by superpowers. We dedicate this edition to the theme of
hostility in India against the minorities. That we have been
compelled to do this when the world is hailing out a Merry Christmas
to even those who have lost all hope is a measure of how desperate
things are for Sikhs. So, as
India
covers itself in shame, Merry Christmas!
23
December 2009
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