Racial hatred becoming an incurable malady

We need to recognize that we Indians are in a grave situation where religious bigotry and racial hatred have become a life style disease. Racial prejudice is the result of this deadly disease that affects human consciousness. Once afflicted with that, one will feel reluctant to give your eyes and ears to factual information or facts; instead there will be a pouncing on plain facts. Those who utter facts will be slandered by the disillusioned. There will be an effort to prove that truth has become history and it is an era of lies from now on. If this disease affects the government and the media, the consequence will be catastrophic. This is being proven by mob lynching, racial assaults and calls for genocide. Yet racism, which breeds hatred and animosity, is becoming the new 'new normal'. That is evidenced by the attack made by singling out former Vice President Dr Hamid Ansari in the context of a program in connection with the Republic Day.

Hindus for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization in the United States, organized an event on January 26, Indian Republic Day, to raise awareness among policy makers in the country and members of the Congress. The event brought together 16 NGOs from across the USA. According to the organizers, the event was convened in the wake of the call for the annihilation of Muslims at the Dharma Samsad in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, on December 17-19 and the violence against Christian churches in some parts of the country on Christmas Day. Referring to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in 1998 Bill Clinton , who was at that time US President acknowledged that none of the leaders who occupied seats of power then had any foresight about the genocide and therefore they could not avert that major catastrophe. The Hindus for Humanities demanded that India is on the verge of such a catastrophe and that President Biden should rise to the occasion to urgently intervene in the matter before the racial hatred growing in India turns in to genocide. The objective of the program, titled 'Protecting India's Pluralist Constitution', was to put pressure on the United States, India's strategic partner, to intervene in the matter.

Former Vice President Dr. Hamid Ansari was also present at the event held online. There were 17 organizations sponsoring the event and 11 speakers. However, the media and official circles chose to single out one among the organisations, i.e. Indian American Muslim Council, and Hamid Ansari, the only Muslim among the speakers for attack. Ansari's recorded video talk highlighted the dangers of shifting from the declared principle of civic nationalism to the concept of cultural nationalism, highlighting India's diversity. He warned in his brief speech about the attempt to monopolize political power by interpreting the majority of the vote as religious majority. However, the mainstream media made a fuss, accusing him of insulting the country and sharing the stage of anti-national organizations at a ceremony held abroad. In response, the Ministry of External Affairs condemned the former Vice President's speech and program.

The executive director of the forum, Sunita Viswanath charged that that the mainstream media, which handpicked only the Muslim organization and Hamid Ansari, and deliberately did not refer to the organizers of the event, the Hindus for Human Rights, or any other organization or speaker, and made baseless allegations out of sheer Islamophobia. She pointed out that the program had started with the introductory remarks of moderator Sravya Tadepalli that as a Hindu, "it is my religious duty to speak out when oppressed people face atrocities". Therefore, Tadepalli points out that the motive for not mentioning any such facts and focusing only on Ansari was to incite racial hatred.

Dr Hamid Ansari, who is the only one to have become Vice President twice in a row, after Dr S Radhakrishnan, is a diplomat and scholar who has proved his standing both inside and outside the country through his neutral democratic stance. During his tenure as Rajya Sabha chairman, he has had to disagree with both the UPA and NDA governments. That can only be seen as natural and part of the decorum in a democracy. But the NDA government dealt with it in a disgusting manner. He was given a farewell by the ruling party with cryptic words and racial innuendos, breaking all conventions. Now the Sangh Parivar is proving through the hate campaign against him that it has not become free of its animus towards him. When the regime and the state are criticized, instead of dealing with it in a healthy way, viewing critics through the lens of their religion and community, is a malicious attitude that needs to be viewed with concern. This ill-advised critique testifies that the depth of the Indian crisis is beyond what the Hindus for Human Rights has perceived.