Minority bashing is the norm of the day

 The other day I was talking to a gentleman who had retired from Indian Civil Services not long ago. I always respect him as a learned person with a decent knowledge in various fields, but recently transformed into a Blind BHAKT (a term used for the rabid followers of Modi/BJP, often interchangeably) harboring belligerent views towards the minorities.

He blamed all the ills plaguing India on the minorities, especially the Muslims. He even tried to justify the myth propagated on media, social or otherwise, about each Muslim having four-four wives and ten-ten kids. The gentleman has a good knowledge of Greek History and never fails to quote the Greek mythological characters. I tried my best to reason with him, alluding to the Ancient Greeks whom he idolizes were good at logic.

I told him - "Muslims having four-four wives and ten-ten kids is far from the truth and more fictitious than any fables from Greek mythology. Forget about keeping multiple wives, overwhelming majority of Muslims I know have no more than two kids. There could be exceptions, but there are exceptions amongst other communities too. 

For example - the well known Bollywood actor Dharmendra has two wives. One of his wives Hema Malini is a MP from BJP. Also Hindus are no less guilty in producing ten-ten kids (an euphemism for having multiple children), one of them is Laloo Yadav, a prominent politician from Bihar. Hindus too are not behind at getting into a repeat-until loop until a male progeny is produced to proudly carry on their linage. As expected my explanation fell into deaf ears.

Our senior citizen and retired government official continued blaming the Muslims for the communal riots in India. I again tried my counter argument - "Most victims in the form of loss of life and property in communal riots in India are Muslims". He nonchalantly replied - "HAN MA. KETE TA PATHANA MARI GALE TA KANA HELA " - "So what if some Muslims got killed" ? I felt sick to my stomach hearing this from a high level official from Indian Civil Services who not long ago was in a responsible position in the Government.

Still trying to reason with him I continued further - "I have more than a dozen close Muslim and Christian friends. Not a single one of them is happy about Modi led BJP government. Unhappy would rather be an understatement, they feel outright insecure in this administration. I can vouch they are no less patriot than rest of my friends". Our retired Babu was hardly impressed with my logic and went on and on doing character assassination of Muslims and Christians to certain extent.

I interjected - "Well, we can indulge in these arguments and counter arguments all night long on this subject without reaching any conclusion. It is now high time to talk about solutions. BJP's leader and our ex Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee famously said, "you can change your friend but can't change your neighbor". In India we have 200 million Muslims living amongst us as our neighbors in every neighborhood. We can't simply dump them into Bay of Bengal. We need to learn to live with them with mutual trust and respect, I said. His response was - "Vajpayee was a nincompoomp. Modi is the real tough guy to deal with the PATHANAs". I shied away - "Modi is rather part of the problem, not the solution I was looking for."

Finally, I decided to quit as I saw there was no point in wasting each other's precious time on this futile debate. Congress party was the champion of appeasement politics whereas BJP thrives on the politics of divisiveness. Just "Unnis - Bees" (19 - 20) difference in between them. Interestingly many who once used to be close to Caterpillar Congress in recent years have morphed into Butterfly Modi/BJP Bhakts. They don't belong to any party, but to the proverbial CHHATA (Umbrella) Party, with BARSA JUADE, CHHATA SIADE syndrome - "Move the Umbrella in the direction of rain" - simply meaning "A fairweather person". I bet, no sooner the Congress party comes back to power a few blind Bhakts will turn their umbrella in the appropriate direction but by then the damage too irreparable to be undone.