Religious and Regional Disputes must Quit India

 I am trying and failing to remember the last time anyone agreed on anything in this country. SRK wins the national award for Jawan and folks are willing to fight to the death over their strong support or vehement criticism over this admittedly dubious decision. Trump who has put the T in toxic and built an evil empire on the strength of his bullying and boorish ways has made India the target of his latest temper tantrum for daring to deny that he brokered a historic peace between India and Pakistan and is therefore owed a Nobel Peace Prize. While most Indians are outraged there are some who have seized the moment to express their contempt for the motherland and PM Modi. In Tamil Nadu, Kavin Selvaganesh became the victim of a dishonour killing and naturally the discourse was evenly divided between sensible people who pleaded for justice and scum who doubled down on caste pride and justified his killing.

If we cannot agree on basic rights for our fellow Indians where are we headed? Earlier, we stereotyped our country folks just for laughs with the South assuming that all North Indians are brash people who perform the bangra unreservedly at inopportune moments while the North insisted on pretending that all Madrasis eat idlis or noodles slathered with curd and worship Rajnikanth but it is no longer remotely funny. Especially since we have allowed assorted differences to tear us apart and set our collective progress as a nation back by a few centuries.  

It is bad enough that our ancestors lived through the evil that was partition when we carved up our country and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of precious lives over religious fundamentalism then and ever since but it is worse that we continue to allow individual/ regional differences, religious extremism, caste, class and linguistics based fault lines to get in the way of nationalism and unity. 

There is nothing wrong with being proud of your regional roots, language, culture etc. but this cannot be allowed to prevail over our Indian identity. Likewise politicians and their minions who insist on a Hindu - Hindi Rashtra are emulating the same divide and rule policy that the British used to exploit and plunder India. This is inexcusable and we cannot keep blaming the Mughals and the Brits for our failures post Independence, especially our tendency to squabble endlessly over everything which has led to us amounting to nothing. 

Petty parochial interests being chosen over national welfare reflect poorly on us especially when there is so much at stake for India. Surely it is possible for us to preserve our unique  regional as well as national identities without letting one subsume the other? If we can pull this off, perhaps we will stop the perennial bickering which has  served absolutely no useful purpose and finally realise the dreams of our freedom fighters who fought and died for the vision of a better India where all have freedom, dignity and none are fractious fools. 

This article was originally published in TNIE Magazine