How would one describe the emotion when you are constantly reminded or questioned about your right of living in your country?
Anger.
Outrage is so much easier.
People like us, can be mocked as the “keyboard” activists, whose outrage ranges from a blog post or numerous facebook and twitter posts. From the list of activities in a day, almost half of it is consumed by arguing endlessly with people whose ideas are never going to change. Yet, since we have so much time on our hand and the constant urge to not sit idle, we just never stop shouting about issues.
There are few who relate to us, few show their solidarity, few feel disgusted of every word we utter and even few who laugh at our plight.
Those of you who know me from Jamshedpur, understand how difficult life has been, and it has only been with Allah’s blessing, it has become a little stable. I doubt there is anyone in my family who even speaks about politics, national issues or everyday controversies. Except my late Grandfather who was into anything political. I’m pretty sure that my non-facebook using Ammi , if comes to know that I write things concerning issues like these, her first words would be, “kya zarroart hai tujhe ye sab ki?” (What is the need of all this).
Do you think any of us who do all this on Social media or elsewhere, likes doing it? We would feel ashamed if a non-Indian even points to incidents happening in this country to us. Even if some of you wouldn’t want to believe, it is our country too. We don’t need to do a Surya Namaskar to prove that. A lot of us have far better things to do. The concern of the most of the Indian muslim focusses around earning bread for his family. If you don’t believe, just take a walk across any of the city suburbs, ghettos, you’ll find a lot of us. Do you think they care who is in the government? Or whether there is a ban on anything or not? Or that there is something called Love Jihad? All this information doesn’t give them their bread.
[Image courtesy: Saddahaq.com]
I’ve outraged a lot, be it shouting aloud about why I’m not sorry about eating beef or criticizing Modi to questioning the Closet Sanghis.
Outrage is Anger.
But it is not just about the anger. All this is Sad. If the present situation doesn’t make you sad, then I question you. Just like everyone is questioning our identity. And please don’t start the chain of messages of solidarity, if you really care about it, then do something.
From those politicians who is hell bent on sending us to Pakistan and anyone among you who never stops at putting that as a reference in your jokes. From deciding what we should eat and killing if we don’t comply and even justifying the same. More than the mob which killed Ikhlaq in Dadri, the MPs from the government telling, “If you eat beef, this will happen”. Not just that, the Chief Minister of a state proudly suggests, if Muslims don’t stop eating beef, they can go to Pakistan?
If what MPs, Chief Ministers and spokespersons of the ruling party, then this happens to be a Hindu Nation?!
I can list down Muslim freedom fighters, Kings, Nawabs and others who actually fought to get us this freedom which is now being shown to us as some sort of charity. And even if list them down, those of you whose ideology still roams around India to be a Hindu nation, will ignore that piece of information.
If you really care about the Idea of India, then do something to save it. Instead of responding to the Dadri Lynching with “A hindu killed in Bihar by Muslims”, “Why were you silent when that happened?”, “What about Godhra?, try to understand that the Idea of India is being removed brick by brick. Now it is just a few bricks, but if this continues there will be a bigger wall between us. A wall which won’t be easy to break.
Please consider this a request from an Indian Muslim and save the idea of our country. It is neither yours nor mine, it is ours.