by Syed Mohammed
After all, it’s not everyday in India that one gets to hear of a person accused of being a terrorist getting a ticket to the General Elections.
A lot of my liberal, ‘moderate’ Hindu and ‘atheist but culturally Hindu’ friends may not like what I am to say. But I have to say it and do so with the utmost humility and in hopes that you will understand.
The BJP has fielded terror accused ‘Sadhvi’ Pragya Thakur from Bhopal. The party received in 2014, and continues to recieve, massive support from your community.
Without any malice, I would like to tell you that I’ve come across several BJP supporters who who have criticised Muslims for allegedly not condemning violence perpetrated in the name of Islam. ‘Moderate’ Muslims were condemned for allegedly not being vocal. The clergy was slammed and their centres – the madrassas – were called terror factories. The words terrorist, Pakistani, extremist, Islamist, radical, fundamentalist and Muslim were used liberally, interchangeably.
Whenever the Muslim community condemned a terror attack, it was never enough. The community was expected (and told) to be louder. When the clergy said that violence has no place in Islam and killing an innocent was akin to destroying humanity, they continued to be looked at with suspicion. I remember well that it was around two years ago that important Muslim clerics had converged to unequivocally condemn ISIS. A ‘journalist’, instead of asking pertinent questions, accused them of being obscurantist and claimed that saying ‘inshallah’ or ‘mashallah’ was the reason behind the community’s backwardness.
I agree that we, like you, are not perfect. I know that we, collectively, like you, are no paragon of virtue. But we are trying to be better people. We will get there. Soon. insha’Allah. Mashallah.
But having said that, things are different today. After all, it’s not everyday in India that one gets to hear of a person accused of being a terrorist getting a ticket to contest the General Elections, that too from the single largest party which gave the country a ‘Hindu nationalist’ Prime Minister. This is new for me. And it breaks my heart.
So I say this to you: Please stop this from happening. Please do something and get this ‘Hindu nationalist’ Prime Minister to withdraw her candidature. That is, if you have the time, inclination, and of course, the courage.
And more importantly, please don’t expect us to live by some false standards which you have set for us. Get your (shit together and) house in order first. Because in this post-Pragya Hindu Politics era, any kind of pontification from you comes across as sheer hypocrisy.
Article taken from Syed Mohammed’s Facebook post.
Syed Mohammed is a Principal Correspondent at The Hindu daily.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.
