Our One Nation

“Unity in diversity”. I remember this being taught in school almost like the unique selling point for our country. “There are thousands of languages”, “People of all faiths live in India”, “We are a mix of different cultures and historical influences”. All of these statements are very true. We do have a diverse population, but growing up, I saw less and less of the ‘unity’ part, and I instead saw more of the hidden, ugly discrimination. Hidden previously only because of my childhood innocence and a privileged upbringing.

Where did we go wrong as a country? How come today, a citizen of “the largest democracy” is told not to voice his opinions because it puts him in danger?

I feel that the nation has been sliced like butter into “us” and “them”, and this has been achieved by making the Hindu majority feel threatened. A narrative has been subversively pushed that Hindus and the Hindu religion is in danger and people have lapped it up. The use of the word terrorism has been mangled and deformed from its definition to become religion specific. They now riot to tear down mosques because of feeble historical claims. I would agree that there is a section of the population which has always had these ideas, but they were never in the majority before.

When someone belongs to an overwhelming majority, their sense of identity is dormant. Slowly, as they feel like there is a change of demographic taking place, that minorities are getting more empowered, they double down on the oppression. They feel that they might be forced to change a system that is built upon social hierarchy and undue privileges, and this overwhelms them. They vote for parties that implicitly or explicitly stoke that fear. But all this is based on a falsehood, because the attempts to better the living conditions of minorities are not the same as attacking the majority. I admit there have been instances where Hindus have been targeted, specially in regions where they themselves are a minority, but these have been blown out of proportion and used for fear mongering. Religious tensions have existed in plenty of places since our independence but it was never of the scale we are seeing today. Focusing on one group and making them feel afraid is how communal discrimination has exploded in recent years.

We have to realise that the Muslim family living two streets away are not the mobs which killed Hindus in Pakistan. We have to realise that Muslims getting killed in Madhya Pradesh is also an act of terrorism. That north-east Indians are still Indians, and that there is no racial blueprint to being an Indian. And most of all we have to realise that we have privileges which we have been enjoying since birth solely due to us being in a majority. Our religion has never been censored. We have a Hindu astrologer on all news media most mornings, but people take issue with the azan. I have had extra classes in school on Christmas, but can you ever imagine that happening on Diwali or Holi? If I support some other country in a cricket match, nobody would say anything, but one small, valid criticism of the government or the local municipality earns someone from a minority the “anti-national” brand. I can call myself a Shayar without knowing a single thing about it, but a professor of Sanskrit being a Muslim sparks riots even though he spent years studying the subject. When we understand all this, our position of power, that is when this irrational fear will go away.

Yes, what happened to the Kashmiri pandits was unfair (which is a very complex geo-political issue in itself), but that should not stop us from having a dialogue about what is happening in Kashmir right now. We all, as a nation, have to collectively ensure that this “violence begets violence” cycle is stopped. Accepting the persecuted Hindus from other countries is a noble effort, but why are the Rohingyas and the Ahmediyas not deserving of refuge? The people being converted back to Hinduism through “ghar wapsi” were never forcefully converted, they were dalits fed up of casteism seeking equality. The mindset people have fallen prey to right now is just deepening the divide and stopping us from creating a safe society for not just a particular group, but for all of us.

For a while, I felt like diversity only creates problems. All these issues made me feel that only a segregated homogeneous population is capable of being productive and happy, that humanity as a whole lacks the ability to accept differences. But as I matured, I understood how counterproductive that way of thinking is. Didn’t the British boss over us for years by this same divide and rule? People from different cultural backgrounds have slightly different ways of thinking and these small differences can enable a population to find innovative ways to tackle problems. We can draw parallels to Darwin's theory of evolution here, a population with no variation would never ever be able to evolve and survive. Not only that, culture and art being shared in a diverse population breeds more creativity, brings joy to our lives and helps us mature as individuals. India being so diverse is a thing of beauty, we just need to get over those hurdles, solve our problems and go forward together, as a nation. I still have hope for the day when we have real unity in diversity.