UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE SWORDS

FIFTY NINE years, the time which passed before I felt tired, before a pain shot in my feet, I sat down, drew a deep breath, and looked back across my protracted journey, where I had gained, and lost, where I had succeeded and failed, of the evils that I had managed to over come, and at the failures which broke down to debris, whose shards lied scattered across, one such shard lied embedded in my feet, giving me pain, excruciating pain, bending down I drew it out, and posed it against the sky, painful memories flashed across, tears swelled up in my eyes, it was yet another failure I held, it was the blood drenched brand of secularism, I AM INDIA.

Ever wondered what is actually happening when you converse with someone who does not belong to your religion, caste or creed, is it a simple communication-taking place between two human beings, two sets of breathing tissues, two people who work, study or live together. No. The conversation taking place between two such human beings is a dialogue between two different teachings, different ethics, different ideologies, different principals, different cultures, different means, IT IS A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO CIVILIZATIONS.
The republic of India is home to many such humans, home to people who have entered this land at different eras of human history, have entered with the promise of money, pastures, survival, who survived and changed under the colonial powers, and continued to live through the age of depression, ascended together under the banner of a economically struggling middle class, ran together to catch the bus to office, spewed paan on the same walls, watched chitrhaar, sitting in the same room. But, as it is, they differed. Ignorance of each other's faiths and difference of godhead was always a dangerous combination, and so it did prove here. This combination led each Indian to be commercialized, commercialized for the political arena. Hatred was instilled, lines were drawn, history was remodeled, The Harijans, became the Dalits of political India, and calls like that of "Maharastra only for Maharastrians", started resonating, with this, the secular fabric of our nation caught fire. Millie, Hashimpura, Punjab, Babri, 1992 bombing, Gujarat, Staines, Akshardham, and the shrieks of the common Indian, they all happened, and then got buried under the weight of probing committees.
What did we do, we covered our faces, and managed to find excuses, blaming people like Modi, and Dawood Ibrahim. What we failed to understand is that Modi's and Gandhi's, and Dawood's all co. exist; it is we the people of India who give them the chance. We change our mode of thought, and the Modi's and Dawood's disappear.
Today 59 years after partition, the Muslim and the so-called lower caste Hindu Dalits are still not a part of the mainstream India. Why?, The Muslim, partly due to the alienated view received from the Hindus, and mostly due to their confinement to their own culture, because of the seclusion they are living in, and saying too little. Living in seclusion is a sign of non-cooperation; sort of a danger to the family next-door, Saying too little is a marks the presence of contentment, it tempts the rage of the extremists. The need is for the Muslims to come out of the cocoon, be wise, be moderate and travel with the mainstream India, to make their Hindu counter part aware of his presence as a responsible citizen of India, to be the first one to protest when a terror bomb goes off somewhere inside the lap of India, killing innocent Hindus, to be present in those games of cricket being played in the urban by lanes of India. As of the Hindu lower caste, they still face discrimination in work places, educational institutions, and public
transport systems, land ownership, and access to water sources and in all
imaginable public motion, to have their woes simply exploited by the political India. The BSP, and the SP duo came to the forefront, in Uttar Pradesh, exploiting the issue to the ground, taking advantage of it to the fullest. The UPA coalition rode upon the reservation issue, further promoting the dislike for the backward classes, in the eyes of a common Indian, Laloo, Mulayam, Mayawati they all participated in the game, while the backward classes were not sympathized for being backward, but the forward classes were criticized for being forward. While this went on, the Harijans lingered to be the Dalits of India. Here the need is to bring change on a grass root level, we got to hack the roots at the rural level, where people are made to believe in the caste dissimilarity, and this could be done only with the upcoming of reasoning, of logic, of literacy.
Today, all school history text books manage to find space for the atrocities done on Hindus by the Muslim king and the pre independence Jalianwala Bagh killings, but all fail to speak of the co-operation that existed between Muslim kings and their Hindu subjects for centuries, or failed to have a word of the Hashimpura killings that happened 40 years after independence. Just because the people who were killed, had not power, to assert there better stand. This was unjust, less because it failed in terms of justice to the Muslims, but more because it deceived the Hindu child, into hating that Musalmaan on the adjacent desk, and for the coming years, in office, at residing localities, and in society.
Just the other day I was speculating. How much the so-called Jihadis and the fascist rulings of India differ at their ideological pedestal, and at the same time how much they depend on each other. How simple the formula of hate is. Demolish the Babri, kill some Muslims, and the Jehadis extend their hand across the borders to tug at the sleeve of the Indian Musalmaan, and tell him 'look the Hindu killed you, now let us plant a bomb in their courtyard', next, there goes off a series of bomb blast, Hindus are killed, and the grounds for next Muslim killing is ready on a justifiable opinion of the Indian Fascist. The cycle goes on. While the wolves sitting on both side of the LoC, grin, we Indians live and die under the shadow of swords.
The un-secular state of India is not limited to religious lines; it is carried over to the extremes of caste, class, and state origins. The Tamils hate Andhras and Andhras hate Tamils, Andhras in Hyderabad hate Maharashtrian's and Maharashtrians hate Andhras Gujaratis hate Maharashtrians and Maharashtrians hate Gujaratis. Why ? The answer is simple. It is not because there is any accepted disgust between the two. It is because there are cracks of differences between them, and the axe of political intentions is driven in those cracks, in camouflage of other issues. The birth of 'Shiv Sena' and the 'Bhumiputra' strategy of Bal Thackery, which believed in exuding all non Maharashtrians from Maharastra, was in it self a scar, on the so called secular fabric of India.
The Indian brain which has always been made to consider communal, and sectarian cacophony of the governments as yard sticks to their credibility, never got a chance to think beyond BJP and Congress, we have through and through been puppets at their hands. However, the selection was of the best among the worst. Both the parties, one openly un secular, and the other declared secular, but actually pseudo-secular, have been equally evil at their designs. The BJP played at Babri and Gujarat, but so did the Congress with hundreds of innocent Sikh souls in Punjab, 1984, and countless other stances. There is blood on every hand. And the affect, is seen not in the corridors of the Parliament, but in the by lanes of the Urban and Rural India, where mothers tell their children not to befriend someone, because he\ she is not one of there people.
All this needs a change.
The very definition of secularism needs a change; secularism is all in all a very non-materialistic thing, which includes religious secularism, just as it does, economic secularism, or gender secularism. But, in our nation, the definition of secularism is limited to frame all but communal secularism; our brains fail to think beyond it.
The change that we, as common Indians are capable to bring around is not about Babri, and Godhra, it is about little thing, things which start in a class room, get carried on to befriend that family living next to your flat, it is about extending your hand to help pull in that old, bearded man with a skull cap into the compartment of a departing local train, it is about being the one to protest the most when a few fanatics of your religion gear out a evil design of terror. It is about being logical and sane to critism. We may then be what we should be, Indian citizens. Simple, isn't it.

ALI KIRMANI