The fraud and hypocrisy of Liberal Indian Crowd
Liberalism is a political philosophy founded on the noble ideas of liberty and equality. In the Indian context specifically, liberalism is often clubbed with secularism and socialism. For those not following ideological debate in India, usually those who oppose BJP, RSS and Hindutva are labelled as seculars and/or liberals. The definition is so funny that even the most rabid Islamism and Missionary supporters call themselves secular or liberal in India!
However, if you closely observe, liberalism in India is mostly becoming yet another code name for anti-Hindu or anti-Bharatiya Sanskriti. We hardly find the so-called liberals standing up to causes equally, when different sections of the society face similar issues. No wonder on the social media #AdarshLiberal kind of tags were floated to mock the liberal hypocrisy in India.
Let's run through some recent events:
Start with the terrorism part. Over the past 6 years, there has been quite a big noise made by the self-proclaimed seculars and/or liberals about “saffron terrorism”. Their nitpicking aimed at few people who happened to have Hindu names, who were being interrogated in incidents that had terror angles. The real intention was to use the equal-equal angle, as almost all terror incidents in India involve Muslim names. But this artificially manufactured “saffron terror” rocket is yet to take off. Not a single big terror incident was conclusively decided in the court of law as committed by “Hindu” terrorists. In fact, incidents where pressure was put by senior Congress party leaders to frame Hindu organisations were reported. Finally on 20th February 2013, the then Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had to come out publicly to regret his statement about “saffron terror”. The matter has died since then. On the other hand, the same self-proclaimed seculars and liberals had serious problems if someone used the term “Jihadi terror”, citing groups like Indian Mujahideen or Lashkar-e- Taiba. They jumped immediately stating, terrorists have no religion!—A prime example of liberal hypocrisy on serious topics.
Next is freedom of speech and expression. The honourable Supreme Court of India stuck down the controversial Sonia Gandhi's UPA legacy of Section 66A, nicknamed on the social media as “Sibal's law”. It was a draconian bill passed in the Parliament in just seven minutes on the 23rd of December 2008. How could the world's largest democracy pass a draconian, anti-free speech and anti-constitutional law in just seven minutes, without any debate? When it came for discussion amendments in 2012, the then UPA minister Kapil Sibal justified the Section 66A vehemently. So much for the liberalism! Liberals in this case crushed the freedom of speech.
One BJP MP from Karnataka, M Rama Jois had informed the Parliament that 66A was nothing short of legislative terrorism! Still it was a law for years and seriously abused by the rich and powerful, including the son of a powerful union minister P Chidambaram, against a social media user. Fast forward to 2015 March – the same fascist mentality people are out in the streets “welcoming” the scraping of 66A in the court. Not just the politicians, but the self-certified liberals of Indian media like Sagarika Ghose, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai are all welcoming it now, while they supported “reasonable restrictions” on free speech when Sonia Gandhi's UPA was in power. This has become the hallmark of Indian liberals who make shameless U-turns on the core liberal ideology of free speech.
Now look into the “attacks on Christian churches” that are in news. Not just the fundamentalist Christian leaders, but the so-called liberal media was marching with loud noise against PM Modi and “Hindutva forces”. But if you analyse some of the church attacks or rape incident being discussed extensively, you will find a whole different perspective. After much noise made by the liberal against “Hindutva”, it was found that Mangaluru Police arrested a man in connection with pelting stones at St Joseph Vaz prayer centre at Panir in Mangalore diocese. And the arrested 30 year old man was a former employee of the church who pelted stones. He had left the church just two weeks prior to the incident, for not getting enough pay. It had nothing to do with Hindu and Christian relation under a “right wing Modi government” as projected by chest thumping liberals. Similarly, liberals liberally made lot of noise in Mumbai. Maharashtra police arrested four folks for allegedly attacking the St. George Catholic Church in Navi Mumbai. Police found no evidence of any communal angle to the stone pelting. Infact, information about some locals who used to run an illegal business near the Panvel church complex was tipped off to the cops. The four locals, who thought the church had tipped off, pelted stones due to personal animosity with the members of the church. But it was blown up as a “Hindu attack on Christians”, which fortunately fell flat on the liberal faces within 48 hours.
The pattern of blaming Hindus, RSS and Modi government is rampant among the liberal Delhi Hindus and fundamentalist Christians of India. Take the Dilli “church attack” noise made strategically just before the Assembly elections this year. A small fire in the Christmas crib was made out to be a church attack. But no noise was heard after the police clarified that it was a short circuit and nothing to do with Hindus. In spite of repeated outrage manufactured by the liberal corner, Delhi police have clearly told that there is no pattern of “church attacks” in the nation's capital. A stray church theft incident could be blown up into international headlines while 265 Hindu temples in the same city have seen burglaries over the past year. But who can convince a chest beating pseudoliberal?
The same way, the loud liberal noise about the unfortunate nun-rape case from West Bengal dwarfed into whispers the moment Bangladeshi names came up in the investigations and arrests. A huge attempt to frame “Hindutva” and “Ghar Wapsi” backfired once again.
And lastly, let's look into the protection of cows in Maharashtra. A huge noise was made by the self-professed liberals. They even went to the extent that this was a violation of freedom of religion in India! Poor guys forgot the fact that Indian Constitution does not give any right to eat a particular animal. In fact the Article 48 in the constitution authored by BR Ambedkar clearly calls for protection of cows in India. This article clearly calls for all Indians to work towards the prohibition of the slaughter of cows, calves and other milch/draught cattle. In fact most of the anti-cow slaughter laws in India today were enacted by Congress governments across the years, with Indira Gandhi taking special attention by writing to Chief Ministers during her tenure as PM. But one law in Maharashtra, that too after delaying the bill passed democratically 19 years ago, was used to fan anti-Hindu and anti-BJP feelings by these pseudoliberals. The same people, who jump to own Mahatma Gandhi at the drop of a hat, hypocritically abandon his most important call, which was supporting ahimsa.
We can go on listing the incidents. For those who carefully follow the manufactured outrage at every incident, it is clear that the self-proclaimed liberals of India find no courage for a “pink chaddi” when the attack on a woman is by Muslim mobs like it happened in Bhopal during PETA protest in 2014. They find no voice when 265 temples get vandalised or looted in the nation's capital over the past year. They are no-where to be found when a 75-year-old Charandas ashram resident, a Hindu widow, was allegedly gang raped and killed during the same period, when they were on streets demanding justice for a Christian nun. They talk high about minority and Dalit rights when it comes to beef, but forget the fact that a champion of Dalit rights, BR Ambedkar himself got us a Constitution that calls for cow protection in the Article 48. They talk very highly about freedom of speech, but at the first chance, block those who expose their lies or canards on Twitter. They try to repeat 1000 times that terror has no religion, but the first chance they get to abuse Hinduism; they come out with “Hindu terrorism”!
Why liberals….Why? Why can't you be truly liberal and stop getting exposed regularly?
Kiran Kumar S (The writer is Bengaluru based columnist)
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