Bhai, Where Do We Go From Here?

Dear Mr Narendra ‘Bhai’ Modi,

Congratulations on managing a convincing win and here’s wishing you the best as you pack your bags to 7 Race Course Road.  Kudos to the way you managed to spur a nation to dream of a stable government, sustainable development, eradication of inequality and what not.  

When you walk up to the highest office of my country, I can only congratulate you for the excellent public relations exercise you had triggered over a year ago. The strategy has paid off, and enticingly well, indeed.

But then, Mr Modi, though I congratulate you, I do it not from the bottom of my heart. For, whenever, I see you smile, the weeping souls of 2002 appear, soaked in blood and tears, in my conscience. Whenever you address my Muslim friends out there as bhais, I know you don’t mean that at all.

The whole of India is now reverberating in joy on your election and what a massive one it has turned out to be. But then, does that mean the whole of India is celebrating? When you thank the voters profusely for giving you the mandate to rule, have you ever thought of what secular India has been thinking of?

In case you haven’t realized, Mr Modi, life in secular India has ceased to exist. And through that, secular India is dead and gone too.   I, and many like me, who have always taken pride in calling ourselves the children of a secular India, are in mourning mode.

 I’m sorry to say that you and your parivar have now put an end to the secularist beliefs that have helped my nation survive. When your cronies start to talk of building the Ram temple at Ayodhya, it gives me the jitters. A secular nation that we are, why do we need temples or mosques that build boundaries among brethren?  Why do we need a Hindutva way of thought when we are all Indians?

In case you didn’t realize, your parivar folks have been out in the open doing all sorts of things possible to make sure that we all love you. Frankly, I did try. But my conscience doesn’t let me speak good of you. Simply because, I find the goodness to be spoken about missing in you!

 Now that you have become PM, my hopes go for a toss. My hopes of India being seen as a secular nation take a backseat. I find it difficult to mingle with my Muslim brothers as they see me as just another Hindu.  Till recently I was one among them.  And now, see how things have changed. I’m a Hindu in Modi’s Hindustan. I’m just another thread in the saffron fabric. I hate this existence.

Will Modi give me, and the secular India I belong to, something to be happy about? Or, are you bound on following the Sangh Parivar’s way of fanning Hindutva thoughts in my secular nation? What we need are not temples, or the trident sporting kar sevaks that will now come out in the open with renewed vigor.

I’m a Hindu and I’m of course proud of being one. But more than being a Hindu, I feel myself proud of being a secular Indian. This is something you or your men may not understand in its essence. For, you have always thought through your mind that has been programmed to be partial to the Hindus. But then, you need to realize, India is a country populated by not just Hindus.

Mother India has provisioned space for all to live comfortably once they are born in her lap. Bharat Mata, as you would love to call her, is also mother to the Muslims, Sikhs and Christian who are born or brought up on her soil. Refusing to wear a Muslim skull cap, while readily putting on any other variety of headgear whenever possible, doesn’t sound secular to me.  

Even as the 2002 riots were raging, while working in Mumbai, I had played host to a Hindu friend who had to run away on a night train after being confronted and threatened by armed Hindus in your state just because he sported a beard. I recall with fear the agony on my friend’s face on that night.  It is then when I decided to stay away from you and your beliefs.  You have, unfortunately, done nothing to sweep away such fears from my mind with whatever you did ever since.

You are now PM. Congratulations. But my heart goes out to the hapless souls out there who think their existence is now worth just another question mark. Do you have anything for them, something that will make them feel better?  

Anyways, history will provide you with a seat in its pages. We now have a new PM. Wishing you all the best! Wishing my brothers who aren’t Hindus, also the very best!  As for me, I hate this moment. 

Yours truly, bhai

Secular Indian