Bharat is credible because that’s the truth. Despite the world beyond its borders pitted against the largest democracy and a sea of dissidents within, threatening to derail the process, Bharat continues to surge ahead in the myriad indices that matter to the ‘developed’ world. Today, armed with a 5,000-year-old culture, five times older than the English language, Bharat is the world’s third largest when it comes to purchasing power parity and has the world’s third largest army. Bharat possesses the oldest mantra of all times i.e.the Middle Path that was evolved by Gautam Buddha 2,500 years ago and the Ram Rajya concept symbolic of the softening of a king’s otherwise-unrelenting stand.
The inevitable induction of Narendra Modi as Bharat’s leader with an overwhelming never-before-registered majority was fought tooth and nail by a parallel force that works with stealth and speed through non-Governmental networks professing to “address” issues as seemingly innocuous “yet crucial” as “climate change”; an “unbiased media” powered by politicians yet run by “Journalists” now being flayed as presstitutes and “paid media”; and Sections across the world whose interests are directly subverted by the ‘Made In India’ campaign.
The tolerance tattle was inevitable. With the Bharat’s economy picking up in the second quarter ending September 2015 and growing at 7.4 per cent during the quarter on the back of strong growth in manufacturing, trade, hotels, transport and communication services, there had to be a hurdle. So, on September 28th 2015, when a mob attacked and killed 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi, it was turned into an issue of national importance that had direct and dire relevance to the surge of “Intolerance” in Bharat. Bharat’s scholar, academician and former vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi, Malleshappa Madivalappa Kalburgi’s murder on August 30th 2015 triggered a spurt of protests among nondescript writers across Bharat, returning their Sahitya Akademi awards.
Kalburgi had faced death threats previously and had demanded security from the ruling Indian National Congress Government of Karnataka but was not provided with it initially. This was conveniently forgotten by the protestors who seemed to have a single-minded agenda— to flay the State for “Intolerance” in general and Narendra Modi at the helm of affairs, in particular, for failing to “personally apologise” for the murder.
Also, predictably, nobody in the “Free Media” wrote about Kalburgi’s murder with the objectivity so closely associated with the calling but instead reported with utter glee, byte by byte, about how ‘Ho’, ‘Ho hum’ and so forth went on to “Return the award,” to “Protest the Intolerance” in Bharat.
Investigators probing the Burdwan blast and the Mujahideen Bangladesh terror network in West Bengal identified four operatives who “trained recruits at Simulia and Lalgola Madrasas” in Burdwan and Murshidabad districts. In a symbolic-seeming retributive retort, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, “refused financial assistance to madrasas.” The Unaided Madrasa Bachao Committee has planned a stir against the Mamata Banerjee government. And, Bharat is “Intolerant”!
In the United States of America, a FBI report says ‘hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise’. That said, the United States of America continues to look “Tolerant”. Aamir Khan’s bashing in social media and beyond for his comment in an interaction at the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism ceremony was given considering Aamir Khan’s penchant for melodrama and proclivity towards drawing mileage out of a populist Satyameva Jayate.
Why, were his fears of “Intolerance” were even struck down by all-season Modi-baiter All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi who said, “I would have never said what Aamir said.”
‘Tolerance’, as a term itself, seems patronising. When used in description, it indicates that the entity has a higher standing and an authority by law or position through which it ‘chooses’ to tolerate another different from itself, despite its stark discrepancies and allows it to co-exist. It accords a sense of propriety and political correctness when instead it should be replaced with Ahimsa, as Mahatma Gandhi preferred.
Gajanan Khergamker (In this weekly column ‘Credible Bharat’ in Organiser independent editor, legal counsel and film-maker Gajanan Khergamker will tackle issues of law, tolerance, secularism and Bharat’s age-old contribution to peace)
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