The sheer indifference of the Opposition parties and Left lobby on the abetted suicide of Lavanya and targeted killings of Krishna Dharwad and Rupesh Pandey, should prick our civilisational conscience.
The death of Lavanya exposes a nationwide scourge flourishing with political support. The obnoxious torture that 17-year-old Lavanya from Thanjavur was subjected to, over a period of two years before she finally committed suicide, yet again points towards the underbelly of predatory, expansionist missionary ecosystem operating across the country.
What is equally appalling is the attitude of usual suspects Left-leaning political parties and pseudo-liberals, who never cease to provide buffer to predatory missionaries. By her own video admission, Lavanya had been asked to convert to Christianity two years ago. Now, there is a logical chronology to events suggesting that refusal to convert was the reason for her to undergo harassment which led to her decline.
Yet, people like Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who still invoke Rohit Vemula (Hyderabad university student who died by suicide in 2016) every now and then to browbeat the government, remained silent on the issue of Lavanya. It took the young and dynamic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai’s consistent crusade for justice that drew the attention of the national media. Eventually, it was the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court that passed a ruling on the plea of the victim’s father, paving the way for a Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) inquiry.
Why was there such a contrived attempt to negate the conversion angle?
Why did the candle-march lobby or the Twitter outrage specialists not utter a word? Where did the “ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon [I am a girl, I can fight]” gang suddenly disappear? Lavanya’s death, if at all, has only exposed that Hindu lives don’t count much and that predatory proselytisation has more or less been accepted as normal by most political parties.
As I have recently authored a book on Birsa Munda, I know that in Jharkhand the problem has existed since 1840s. It was part of a British strategy to make the tribal population culturally subservient, in addition to the societal and financial subjugation they were already subjected to.
75 years after attaining Independence, why should these predatory missionary activities continue go unchecked? There are several states most notably Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where these forced conversions are leading to social tension. It is bound to explode in the time to come
In fact, Birsa Munda’s family was a victim of this scourge. Birsa Munda too had to be baptised before getting admission in a Christian missionary school in Chaibasa. He eventually rebelled and quit the religion, only to launch a massive crusade against the missionaries in the late 1890s.
The point here is that 75 years after attaining Independence, why should these predatory missionary activities continue unchecked? There are several states most notably Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where these forced conversions are leading to social tension. It is bound to explode in the time to come.
There are chief ministers like YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (of Andhra Pradesh) who are even tacitly encouraging these activities for their narrow-vested interests. In fact, even the stonewalling attitude of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin after Lavanya’s death raises serious questions over the state government’s intent in shielding the culprits. Apart from Lavanya, several Hindu youth have become victims of targeted killings. Krishna Bharwad was shot dead outside his house in Ahmedabad on January 25 for allegedly posting a blasphemous post on social media. On February 20, Harsha was brutally stabbed to death in Karnataka.
Rupesh Pandey, on the other hand, was allegedly brutally killed by 27 Muslim youth in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh in an altercation during the immersion of the idol of Goddess Saraswati.
There are chief ministers like YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (of Andhra Pradesh) who are even tacitly encouraging these activities for their narrow-vested interests. Even the stonewalling attitude of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin after Lavanya’s death raises serious questions over the state government’s intent in shielding the culprits
Barring Krishna’s case, where the BJP-led Gujarat government promptly transferred the case to ATS (anti-terrorist squad), in the other two cases the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led Tamil Nadu government and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led Jharkhand government were purposely sloppy in even registering FIRs (first information reports).
The whole concocted “darra hua Muslim” narrative, supported viciously by the Congress party, has done a huge disservice to the Hindu community, where targeted killings of Hindus and abetted suicides have lost their news-worthiness.
It is time we consider bringing a law that equates targeted killing with an act of terrorism and the case is taken over by NIA (National Investigation Agency). There is a high likelihood that such brazen killing is supported from funds and literature from abroad.
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