LET 22nd JANUARY BE  DAY OF INTROSPECTION 

Kajal Chaterjee

The intervening night between 22nd January and 23rd January marks the completion of as many as 25 years of the dastardly murder of the Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two angelic sons - - Philip (10) and Timothy(6) - - by the communal barbarians in Orissa. The selfless warrior against leprosy had to pay with his life (along with his two sons) just because of his "unpardonable sin" of working for the welfare of poor marginalised people of a country which was officially not his own!

 

 Had the Indian society felt repentant and promised to annihilate communalism in the bud following such a murder of humanity! Far from it, rather the fangs of the communal brigade have attained such a poisonous height that today the secular persons of this multi-religious diverse heterogeneous country are constantly getting mocked taunted abused as "Sickular"! And more the lips fomenting communal vitriol, more the fundamentalists turning popular! Indeed what a moral fall of the society which used to host Rabindranath Tagore Ramkrishna Paramhansa Swami Vivekananda Mahatma Gandhi Jawaharlal Nehru B.R.Ambedkar in its midst!

 

In this respect, an anecdote revolving a towering personality can be recalled. 

 

When Tulsidas was criticised by the fundamentalists for his mindset of religious harmony, he had written in the Awadhi dialect: “Dhoot kahao, awadhut kahao …. Mangi ke khaibo, maseet ko soibo, lebe ko ek na debe ko dou.”("Call me a Hindu or a Muslim ... I can beg for food, sleep in mosque, but wouldn't care for the fanatics")! 

 

 Perhaps the great poet of "Ramcharitmanas" fame also would have felt unsafe today as his love for Ram didn't coincide with hatred towards Muslims or muscle flexing of rabid Hindutva! 

 

 Indeed the ideal Ram of Tulsidas is poles apart from the Ram of his present day Bhakts who merely exploit the name of the epic hero to indulge in blatant communalism. 

 

 It is high time Indians indulge in a bit of sincere introspection and ask in the direction of which nadir we are heading to!

 

Ending with the gallant-hearted noble lady Gladys - - widow of Graham Stuart Steins! Far from demanding any sort of punishment for the killers of her husband and two little children, Gladys simply prayed for repentance and reformation of those communal elements. 

 

But firebrand Bengali poet-cum-singer Kabir Sumon is not so "large-hearted" enough and so he sings out while paying tribute to the angel Graham Stuart Staines - - "Aamar Dharma Tomai Janiye Jai / Gaaner Dibyi Aami Protisodh Chai/ Aamar Bodh-er Haatiyare Saan Diye / Purchi Aami Tomai Songe Niye" ("Let me tell you about my religion /Through divine music, I seek revenge / With the hammer of my consciousness / I join you in trembling")! Yes, all conscientious souls must also join Sumon in demanding punishment for all philistine communal elements of the society who have simply destroyed or simply destroying the secular fabric of India. 

 

 Let January 22 be christened as "ANTI-COMMUNALISM DAY" and India takes a vow to exterminate all forms of communalism from this soil of diversity so that nobody or no group dare to kill missionaries of certain faith, demolish religious shrine of certain community, murder innocents in the name of "love jihad" or "conversions" and openly celebrate all these unpardonable dark acts with barbaric zeal.

 

 Muscle-flexing of religion must stop in this Constitutionally heterogeneous Secular State.