By VIJAY PHANSHIKAR :
The attempt is clearly visible on the horizon
to drive now a horizontal wedge across the
country to create a north-south divide. Not
only is it undesirable but fully condemnable
-- in the strongest possible terms.
For, what is visible is systematic effort to spoil the
national harmony by injecting into the popular
thought-process the poison of disintegration. And
the tool is the overall result of the legislative elections in five States of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Telangana (and Mizoram). The driver
of this dangerous tool-kit is a bunch of political leaders belonging to different constituents of the I.N.D.I.
Alliance formed by Opposition parties.
Here are some disturbing points on the divisive
narrative:
1. The cultured and secular voters of the South
have voted in favour of the secular Congress party by
electing it to power in Telangana, as against the
backing of the parochial Hindu voters to the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- this was stated by a
Congress leader and picked up later by several of his
colleagues across the party ecosystem in the most
shameless manner;
2. The DNA of the Telangana voters is different
from the DNA of the Bihar voters (and the Bihar
DNA is represented by the outgoing Chief Minister of
Telangana Mr. K. Chandrasekara Rao) -- this was
stated by the new chief Minister of Telangana, Mr.
Revanth Reddy of the Congress party, again in the
most brazen manner;
3.
The Gau-Mutra States (!!!) of the North have voted in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
namely Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh, and
Chhattisgarh -- this
was stated by Mr.
Senthil Kumar, Lok
Sabha Member of
Parliament from
the Dravida
Munethra
Kazhagham
(DMK).
Speaker
Mr. Om Birla expunged this remark from the record
of the Lok Sabha following strong objections to it by
several members. Mr. Senthil Kumar also issued a
half-hearted apology, too, for his remark.
T
hese statements have not come in an off-hand
manner -- which is so obvious. These have
come also not as part of a political euphoria, so
to say. Very clearly, these statements or remarks or
observations have come up as part of a tool-kit being
operated by some clever agent-provocateurs gunning
to poison popular
mind and cause
north-south divide
in the country that
will go to Lok Sabha
elections in the next
four-five months.
That the voters
will not fall prey to
these machinations,
is a given of the current national situation, all right. Yet,
this happy and positive reality does not
allow a pardon to be
bestowed upon the
drivers of division in
the larger Indian
society. Embittered
by the terrible electoral defeat in Rajasthan and
Chhattisgarh where the Congress party lost power in
the most decisive manner, and Madhya Pradesh
where it could not whip up an anti-incumbency sentiment against the BJP. Such elements need to be
handed down a strong reprimand by way of a massive electoral rejection and political isolation.
T
his, however, is not a political call.
This is a
nationalist call that transcends the barriers
and barricades of journalism. This is a call to
everybody to identify the enemies of unity and
integrity of the country and reject them with a sense
of urgency. For, when a conscious effort is made to
divide the people in such a brazen manner, the duty
it is of common people to rise above the political rubble and show the drivers of division the door.
These people who wish to foist on the common people an ugly idea
that the people from one part of the country are
more polished and secular than those in another
part of the country, therefore, need to be taught a
terse, no-nonsense lesson. These people are kin of
those who had insisted just some time ago that
Sanatan Dharma is like a disease such as Dengue.
These are also the kin of some who distorted the
verses in the holy Shri Ramcharit Manas a few
months ago in an attempt to present a distorted picture of the country’s glorious past. These people are
also in the kinship
of those who ask
the Pakistanis to
lend them help to
oust Prime
Minister Mr.
Narendra Modi ....!
W
hat kind
of dirty
minds do
these people possess?! They know
nothing of Indian
history. They do
not know that
Sanatan is endowed
with divine glory,
with a great tradition of knowledge
and refinement of
culture, with a philosophy that has remained intact
through time of countless thousand years braving
all attacks.
They do not know that those who have
ever tried to distort or defile Sanatan Dharma have
perished in the end.
These drivers of division have obviously decided to
ignore the reality that from North to South and East
to West, India is a united country and artificial and
politically-motivated division
would not work here. May
these people have their
own way of distorting the
reality of history, but the
fact is that the whole of
South India is a place
dominated by temples
and ashrams, and traditional dance and
music and other arts, and great stories of warriors
and philosophers.
These people also have chosen to ignore the fact of
history that a little boy Shankar emerged from a
small Kerala village named Kaladi and travelled on
foot around the whole of the country establishing
not just four dhaams and become Adi
Shankaracharya but also became a saviour of Hindu
Dharma that was facing tough questions about its
core principles and values.
B
ut then, these drivers of division are the supporters of the old and politically-driven theory
of an unbridgable difference between the socalled Aryan and the so-called Dravidian cultures.
They are also the propagators of the so-called Aryan
Invasion Theory -- that has been proved very scientifically to be totally wrong and baseless with no support whatsoever from any fact from the past.
Of course, this Aryan versus Dravidian is an artificial, fully politically-driven division foisted upon the
larger Indian society by the elements that have
worked hard for long to destroy, demolish the
country under totally false pretexts.
Time it is now to tell all such people that there are
countless numbers of links that bind the north and
south of India together -- bonds of love, bonds of
history, bonds or culture, bonds of food, bonds of
dance, bonds of music, bonds of Sanatan, bonds of
common heritage, bonds of common past, bonds of
common future ...!
Time also it is to assert that India is one place that
could not be defeated by any force in history and
that the country and its society have stood unitedly
against all sorts of invasions not just for a few years
but also for a few thousand years.
How can a couple of political parties and their
shallow pseudo-philosophers then divide the country
horizontally?
They have no power to do that. They have no idea
that they are inviting their doom sooner than later.
May some of such people suggest that Sanatan is a
disease. May some others suggest that the Aryans
and the Dravidians are different. May some of them
call a few North Indian States as Gau Mutra States.
But none of these dirty epithets will ever stick. For,
the country will never back divisive politics in the
long run. The drivers of divisions may register some
wins here and there. In the long run, however, the
country’s larger society will stand together no
matter the propagandist narrative of the dirty minds
driven by shallow and narrow political agendas.
Y
ES, ‘division’ is the key word of these people
who wish to come under a common umbrella
of a political configuration of I.N.D.I. Alliance
-- though they don’t seem to realise that their
internal and natural contradictions will stall their
unity. However, the point here is not to talk of
electoral politics. At this point, one feels like recalling
what Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi told the
Opposition at the start of the current session of
Parliament -- Don’t be driven by negativism, understand that the people need development beyond
politics...!
It is, of course, preposterous to expect the political
Opposition to say that the goal of opposing the Prime
Minister cannot be a credible, enduring mission. For,
what the common people want is a harmonious
polity embellished by development-oriented politics
in which all segments of the larger society get an
equal opportunity to grow. Such people craving to
see India become a truly developed global leader by
2047, therefore, will not be driven by attempts of
artificial divisions of the society. They are now seeing
good signs of real growth and development. Why
should they, then, be driven by falsehood and
Goebbelsian propaganda?
At this point in the national journey, the common
people are looking for agents of unity and
proponents of integration -- and certainly not the
drivers of division.
This is the truth of the story of India today.