Print
Email
IM on Yahoo
Add to Del.icio.us

We are one nation: the consciousness of being one people has grown over the last 60 years and stood the test of unity whenever our borders have been encroached upon by our neighbours. But we have yet to become an integrated nation.

Community differences persist, and far too often manifests in ugly forms — sometimes by outbreaks of communal violence, other times in demonstrations by publicity-seekers pretending their religious susceptibilities are hurt by something someone has said or done. I give a few examples from recent times.

A few nights ago in Agra, a truck hit four men returning from Shab-e-barat. As it happens far too often: people in this vicinity vented their anger by setting fire to trucks, buses, cars and vandalising shops. When it was discovered that the four men injured by the errant truck were Muslims, the violence turned into a Muslim riot. The only explanation is that though outwardly we appear as one people, we have yet to become actually integrated.

Two Sikh members of Parliament, the cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu of the Lok Sabha and Tarlochan Singh of the Rajya Sabha, were shown participating in a havan, performing a Hindu ritual. Sidhu belongs to the Hindu BJP; Tarlochan Singh was elected by BJP’s support.

At Har-ki-Pauri in Hardwar, I’ve seen many perform pooja; they come to immerse the ashes of their relatives and have pandas; all of whom are Hindus, perform Hindu rituals before immersing the ashes. No one finds it unusual. But now both Sidhu and Tarlochan Singh are being castigated for indulging in un-Sikh practices. The inference is that though Sikhs are a part of the Hindu mainstream, there are vociferous elements that are trying to prevent their integration.

All of us — Hindus, Muslim, Christians and Sikhs — have become over-sensitive and touchy about what we construe as attacks on our cherished beliefs.

Some Sikhs are out on the streets protesting against immigration officials examining Sikh turbans before letting them in. But I have not heard anyone protesting against having to surrender their kirpans before they board planes bound for foreign countries. There is no logic behind the protests but they generate the much sought-after publicity.

There are quite a few people who are forever on the look out for what they can construe as attacks on their religion.
Leading a pack are Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi. More than once after they have proclaimed themselves as defenders of their faith, they found that, in fact, no one had actually said or done anything that could be remotely interpreted as offensive to anyone. It is pathetic.

What remains now to knit us all together into one nation, in the true sense of the word, is a more person-to-person relationship between members of different communities. We need more family-to-family mingling, and we must abolish the feeling of ‘us and they’, and actually manage to cultivate the spirit of We Indians.

Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times