Tears of future

The image of the priest of Rama Teerthan Temple in Andhra Pradesh carrying the beheaded idol of Prabhu Ram and his crying openly should be enough to shame the Indian state that swears by its secularism.

In a country, where Hindus are supposedly in majority, vandalising of temples one after another, almost on daily basis, in different parts and different states, shows the actual state of affairs at the ground level.

Population of any community, in any country, does not provide, and has never provided, any protection at the ground level. Indians and Chinese were both in majority, when Britishers and other invaders arrived and kept them occupied for years and centuries. In real life, and in the real jungles of democracy, what matters is not the ‘number of dogs’ in the ‘fight’, but the ‘tenacity of fight’ in the ‘dogs’.

The problem with the majority community of India is that it has never learnt from other communities, which have been at receiving ends historically in different parts of the world. Jews are an apt example. You cannot fiddle with the protection and well-being of jews in any part of the world without facing a ferocious resistance from jews all over the world. Leave the thought of daring to attack their faith or security or history.

The majority community of India has been too ensconced in the blissfulness of looking the other way, even when someone from within it, or its faith itself, is targeted.

The majority in the majority community feel that their turn of being targeted would never come and that any ‘targeting’ of their faith is an exceptional single instance that would not recur. That is why they look down upon, and mock, those who resist on their behalf at the ground level as ‘ruffians’. This is so, even while they have been proven wrong historically, in many parts of the country, wherever they slowly went from being a majority to a minority, and finally to obliteration. Not too many Hindus are left in Karachi or Sindh now, or Kashmir valley for that matter.

The fact remains that any community that does not stand for itself deserves to be treated the way it is treated by others.

If you cannot stand up for your own security, safety and well-being, if you cannot respect your own faith and legacy, no one else will do the job for you.

You cannot outsource your well-being and survival instincts to any government or state.

Any democratic state is an instrument that is trained to listen to those who cry the loudest and the shrillest. Those who are smart know the tricks. Those who are not are doomed to cry.

Even Einstein, the most celebrated genius and a model for Hindu parents for their children, wrote thus – “I am really doing whatever I can for the brothers of my race who are treated so badly everywhere.”

Now compare it with the successful icons of majority community. They look down upon their own members, faith and those who resist attack on their community.

The sooner the supposedly majority community understands the facts on the grounds, the better.

The tears, that the priest shed at the beheading of his deity, are actually the ‘tears of future’. If you can’t see a community’s future in those tears, your head, possibly, is buried too deep into the sand.