long time ago, Dara Singh, the late wrestler Indian movie star had proudly declared at a public meeting that he had first heard about the ‘Indian independence’ while participating at a championship in Singapore in the August 1947. The local radio there had made the news of ‘British ending their rule over India’ popular. But Dara was utterly confused and kept asking friends and acquaintances what exactly it meant by becoming independent. Honestly, he had never known what it was likebeing dependent.
Even today, some 80-90 year old freedom fight survivors confess they have not felt so great about free India. Politicians only have become rich and powerful. The ordinary citizens have gained, if at all, from the technology in time, which has been unstoppable and enormously overpowering. The real development challenges are faced by today’s statesmen and politicians as every ordinary citizen today gets to know nearly everything, most so his rights and how politicians and administrators cheat. The fantastic information technology and the right to informationtogether have made every public activity and decision making process a see-through thing. Age-old era of opacity is gone. The people of least developed nations too know what’s happening around them though they are not at all times capable of resisting or protesting against anti-people moves by the power-players for lack of solidarity or extreme corruption. India despite being a secular country, often finds it difficult to prevent nonsecular forces from grabbing power. India, which began well after attaining freedom, with the second highest Muslim population in the world, is slowly losing the grand reputation of being a perfectly composed country with countless communities displaying incredible sense of tolerance. When partition was declared on this day in 1947, a mad ethnic cleansing process began suddenly across the borders of artificially formed states on the lines of religion. Thousands of Hindus and Muslims were butchered by insane fanatics from both the communities. Two tales of mutual trust and tolerance during those days of turbulence be told:
On August 17, 1947, in Firozepur, east Punjab, lala Dhuni Chand informed the father of Malik Muhammad Aslam about an attack that the RSS and Sikhs were planning. Sure enough, the attack began at 10 pm. Around 300 Muslims took shelter in a local mosque, which was chosen because of its proximity to a police station. Station head officer Trilok Nath was quick to post armed Muslim guards outside the mosque. Nath was an exception because many police officers had turned partisans in Punjab. However, Aslam’s father had not carried his insulin injection to the mosque. As the sugar level steadily rose, the father became visibly ill. At 3 am, slipping through the city under curfew, Dhuni Chand’s son Amarnath came to the mosque to inquire whether Aslam and his parents were safe. Amarnath offered to fetch the insulin pack from his father’s medicine shop. But Amarnath never returned. Aslam learned later that Amarnath was shot dead by the RSS for helping Muslims. In his oral testimony, he said, “I still remember the night when Amarnath was killed by fanatics of his own community. Aslam’s father became too ill to join the caravan going to Pakistan on foot. He too died crying for help in vain.
Similarly, in Gujjial village of Jhelum district, there was a Muslim family of seven brothers who served in the British army. They were captured by Germans during the World War II and had suffered badly. Back home, their salaries and property were managed by one Raghbir Singh Sahni’s parents. When raiders attacked Gujjial village, 70 Sikhs took shelter in the Muslim house, the mother of the seven brothers exhorted her sons saying, “Mein dudhtaddbakshangijeytusiannadeykumaoy." (For the milk you have sucked from my breasts, go forward and save our Sikh friends). The brothers took positions on the rooftop of with their rifles, warning the assailants that they would be shot in case they dared to attack the Sikhs. The assailants had melted away. Much later in his extreme old age, Sahni could remember only one brave-heart name, Bostan Khan.
The BJP Government led by the Modi-Shah team has not done well on the secularism promotion front. They RSS keeps twisting the BJP guys’ arms so strongly as to even force the few secular elements in the fold to intimidate devout Muslims by recommending to them ‘migration to Pakistan’. They have also not given up the Ram Mandir project; they force ‘Saraswati Vandana’ in RSS-promoted schools. Worst of all, cow vigilante militants are promoted and rewarded. Yogi Adityanath is a good human being, but he too prescribes, promotes and participates in activities that offend Muslim sentiments.
Unfortunately therefore, in Kanpur, Meerut and Bareilly, some Madrasas did not sing the National Anthem after unfurling the Tricolour. And Barelvi clerics justified this decision, saying the anthem was written to deify George V, the then king of England, and not to glorify the motherland. “Singing of the National Anthem belittles the struggle of our freedom fighters. Thereby, it has been unanimously decided that such songs will not be sung on the Independence Day.” At the same time, fanatic Muslims have committed grave error by discarding the National Song Vande Maataram which even true Muslims condemn as an act of crime.
A few fanatic Kashmir residents, principally from the Muslim majority, are taking undue advantageof the Hindu-Muslim divide. They have mustered enough courage to brazenly defy the Tricolour by denying its unfurling at a few sensitive locations. It’s high time the BJP national power outfit worked hard at putting together the two great communities that constitute India. Cow worship and vegetarianism entered the Indian culture much later during the Brahmin-domineering period around which the Indians were sweepingly being indoctrinated into Buddhism for it did reform Hinduism by making known the ills of the faith that divided people more than united them.
There are some popular jokes about the soft stand of independent India which make rounds when national events are in process or on:
If you cross the “Afghan” border illegally, you get shot ; the Saudi Arabian border illegally, you get jailed; the “Chinese” border, you get kidnapped and may be never heard of again. But if you were to cross the Indian border illegally, you get a ration card, a passport (more than one if youare smart), a driver’s license, a voter identity card, credit cards, subsidised government housing facilities, easy term loans to buy a house, free education, free healthcare and, of course, voting rights to elect thoroughly corrupt politicians!
The Odisha Government led by the magician Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, is fairly secular in its schemes. BJP think tank members are utterly in dark as to what is keeping the Naveen administration in such enviable esteem as cannot be deciphered. Knowing fully well that the 2019 elections would bring back Naveen yet again, the loudmouths from the nonsecular fold keep roaring at public meetings that they would oust the BJD by bagging 120 seats, a feat that would hit the Guinness records. But the naive rural folks too laugh their bellies out and quip that the saffron colour is losing sanctity of truth and honesty! They should celebrate across a year should only twenty seats befall them! But it’s mad to expect one hundred more in Naveen’s land at a time when the magic and mystique of the reticent CM is causing bigger ripples all over the country. It is heard that the best of political analysts and management gurus will soon be scanning the ‘Naveen aura’ to come up with findings for potential politicians and posterity.
The big debate over ‘Odisha poverty having been diminished’ better be held in the presence of statisticians engaged with socioeconomic survey experts. Heated exchange of words between BJP and BJD spokespersons at television talk shows without much information and data in hand makes no sense. The BJP has to wake up to the secular Indian fabric that is eroding fast. Shah seems to be a plain balloon with such a fragile casing that a kindergarten kid could puncture with his tender nails. Modi is certainly popular, but Shah might eat into it completely. The BJP president needs to pick some real goods kills to master statecraft. Or else, more damage than expected is likely to be witnessed in 2019. Naveen’s monumental reticence may inspire him no end, should he desire to become a master magician!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)