The Malignant Mind

I shared this poster on my Facebook wall yesterday. In response, someone wrote this with a dollop of sarcasm:

“Agree, we don’t mind the country being looted, we don’t want to be proud of singing Vande Mataram, we don’t want to say Jai Hind but we will not allow even a handful of SECULAR (emoji expressing doubt) people being killed.”

(As you see, I have edited the screenshot of the post and the comment, retaining its essential parts alone. I have also blanked out the name and DP of the commentator. I hold him no grudge; and this is too serious an issue to get into a spat.)

From the crispness of his English you would have made out that the person is educated … at least in the conventional sense of the term. He is not a stinking trident-wielding saffron-clad foul mouth capable of lynching helpless men. As a matter of fact, I know that the individual who wrote this has had a successful career behind him. I believe he was a leader at his workplace and a lot of people would have looked up to him. In short, he is a normal, decent person like most of us.

But there are two minor and one major issues with what he says now. First, the minor ones:

Clearly, he believes the past scams, but not the present ones: Bofors was loot but VYAPAM and Rafale aren’t. Or perhaps, he refuses to go through the ample body of evidence on these scams that is available in the public domain, because he believes his party and his leader can do no wrong.

He has also prejudged me. He believes I have a problem with Vande Mataram and I don’t say Jai Hind. In other words, he has put a label on me without making the least effort to find out what my position on them is.

But far, far more importantly, this person believes it is fine if a terrorist organisation stalks an unarmed woman, Gowri Lankesh, for months and sends out three cold-blooded killers who would pump seven bullets into her frail body. Her crime? She was against RSS-BJP. So, her chronicle of death had to be foretold.

Yes, the most dreadful part of the despicable comment is that this normal, decent person, a former colleague of mine, thinks, and publicly says:

IT IS BLOODY ALL RIGHT TO KILL A HANDFUL OF SECULAR PEOPLE!

Oh Dear! When did we drown ourselves in this filthy muck? Who spread the poison in our mind? Jawahar Lal Nehru?

Whoever it was, please think how we can get rid of this malignant mindset. It’s a much bigger problem than elections, for which purpose the poster was originally designed. We must do something.

Stand up against the “ideology” that has been turning normal, decent Indians into spectators to or even devotees of heinous crimes against targeted individuals or groups. An ideology that makes people not only condone cold-blooded violence, but also encourage them. Tell everyone who would listen that the SS men who killed their six million victims in Germany, some of the men who sent people to gas chambers after removing their gold teeth, some of the men who threw babies into fire, … they were all normal decent men who had happy families and kissed their wife and children goodnight before drifting into perhaps peaceful sleep. Tell everyone who cares to listen that a combination of blind faith and atavistic fear of the “other” can turn ordinary people into perfect hate machines.

Stand up against the “ideology” that openly preaches murder, glorifies murderers, and shows absolutely no respect to the laws of the land.

Stand up and speak up. MURDER IS AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME. ENCOURAGING THE MURDERER IS EVEN WORSE.

16 March 2019