Guest Column : India, the land of free thought

India remains the land of free speech in a strife torn world where the Jihadis and ultra-Left groups are spreading hate and intolerance

No freedom is absolute but the closest to that absolute can be found in the land alone where Hindus are in majority. You may be a faithful religious person here or an atheist, you may declare yourself as a God or begin a movement against all gods, you may worship idols or start an ideological movement against all forms of idol worships, still nobody will object. None would declare you a Kafir. No freedom of expression can be absolute, unlimited and above the Constitution. In today’s Bharat, the supporters of violent ideologies are using freedom of expression and democratic rights to attack the same Constitution that has ensured those rights.
In fact, we should be thankful to the organisations like ABVP who have forced the anti-national voices within JNU to say Jai Hind, holding the tricolor high and proved that in Bharat people ready to live and die for the national pride can be victorious and not the ones who want to destroy it.  
Sadly the same ideologies have been known world over for their barbaric intolerance of the others view point. China saw elimination of more than four crore people under Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot’s Cambodia had seen more brutal times when one third of the country’s population died due to the intolerant communist ruler.  And much before that, the erstwhile Soviet Union saw creation of Gulags and Siberia’ labour camps and mass murders of the people who differed with the Bolsheviks. In India, EMS Namboodiripad world’s first democratically Chief Minister of Kerala, said in reply to a media question that “Yes, I have taken oath of the Constitution, but I will work to wreck it from within” (‘Entharo Mahanubhavulu the autobiography of CP Nair IAS, Former Chief Secretary, Kerala).
The same people who swore to wreck the Constitution from within have been wrecking up the issue of ‘intolerance’ and ‘freedom of speech’ to camouflage their activities that are directed at creating disaffection against the same constitution and the judiciary that provide them freedom of speech.
In JNU posters were pasted on the walls by the Leftist organistions that accused the Supreme Court judge who delivered judgment against Yakub Memon as being ‘Manuvadi’. In their eyes, Yakub Memon, convicted of being the killer of 900 Bharateeyas becomes ‘innocent’ and the judge who after giving a midnight hearing to the pro-Yakub sends the barbaric Jihadi to the gallows is accused as ‘being biased’. Few people would remember that EMS Namboodiripad, the first communist CM of Kerala was convicted of committing contempt of court for abusing the judiciary in 1967.
Their freedom of speech fell silent when three thousand Sikhs were killed in Delhi, when Kashmiri Hindus were forced to leave their homes and hearth from the Valley and  when Nandigram massacre occurred. When Ishrat Jahan is found to be a LeT agent, their freedom of speech suddenly comes to shield the terrorist. Do we have to learn lessons of being tolerant and democratic from the people who do not respect the Siachin heroes who are securing our borders in minus 40 degree Celsius, who use derogatory language against the Prime Minister who has introduced unprecedented schemes for the farmers of Bharat?
The reality is, the people, who employed all possible and heinous means to demonise a way of thinking and a leader of view, are not able to digest that the same ideology under the same leadership has received unprecedented popular support and therefore, this ploy of raking up fallacious issues along with a section of media.
These so-called Leftist groups have kept poor farmers and workers of Bharat into darkness. They could see the tears of Kanhaiyya’s mother but failed to take congnisance of Sanjeeta Kumari’s mother who thought education to be a better way than that of a Maoist revolution. Is it because of the killers of Sanjeeta are brethren of Communists in JNU? The time has come to expose such elements who have been inspiring and misguiding students to support anti-national and Jihadi activities.
Tarun Vijay (The writer is a BJP MP from Uttarakhand)