Opinion Tavleen Singh writes: Why Rahul Gandhi is right

It was a week in which these words should have special resonance for everyone who remembers that ‘old’ India in which Shah Rukh Khan was a giant hero, not a villain. What is it about him that the BJP hates so much that they put his son in jail for a month for absolutely no reason? Last week he came under attack again. This time for wearing a green kurta while dancing with Deepika Padukone, who wore a saffron coloured bikini. Senior ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra demanded that his new film be banned because it hurt Hindu sentiments. Actually, it is clowns like them who are seriously damaging the Sanatan Dharma and shaming India in the eyes of the world with their nonsensical Hindutva.

More nonsensical Hindutva came from the BJP government in Maharashtra last week. It set up a special committee that will investigate all inter-religious marriages. Exhibiting remarkable stupidity, the original announcement said that inter-caste marriages would also come up for scrutiny and then this was hastily changed. The committee gives officials the right to interfere in the private lives of people in an odious way, but the road for this has already been paved with the noise about ‘love jihad’ that started when Yogi Adityanath took charge of Uttar Pradesh.

The real purpose of this brazen, needless intrusion into people’s private lives is to make Muslims feel that they are lesser citizens. And to make it clear that their culture and religion is somehow inferior to those born of Indian soil. If accidentally this ends up making Hindu women sound like they are too moronic to choose who to live with and marry, then clearly this is just collateral damage. Rahul is right when he says that the diversity of India that we once celebrated is under threat.

Since the Prime Minister has never once condemned the excesses of Hindutva, we do not know whether turning this ideology into a weapon has his approval. But he would do well to notice that it is not just India’s image that is suffering but his own. This is happening at a time when he has ordered his minions to make a huge drama about India taking leadership of the G20 for the coming year. A meeting in Mumbai of G20 sherpas was given so much publicity last week that people mistook it for a G20 summit. The city was plastered with huge posters of the Prime Minister declaring that this was a ‘watershed moment’ for India.

The changes in ‘our beloved country’ are being noticed in many countries that belong to the G20. In New York last month, I had a hard time explaining to intelligent, serious people that democracy had not been replaced in India by a fascist dictatorship. It was not just the oppression of Muslims that was talked about but also that of Christians. Most of what is being said is based on false propaganda like the alleged demolition of churches and mosques, but there is real concern that ‘Hindutva supremacists’ are destroying not just India’s traditions of diversity but democracy as well.

The Prime Minister has declared more than once that India is the ‘Mother of Democracy’. It is not. This honour goes to Greece where the word comes from. But if Narendra Modi wants to give ancient India the credit, then he needs to be very worried that other democratic countries are beginning to see India as undemocratic and illiberal. Since Narendra Modi is also a proud Hindu, he should pay close attention to how diminished the Sanatan Dharma looks when his ardent supporters make such a fuss about a saffron coloured bikini and a green kurta. As the ‘new India’ takes shape, there are many people who are beginning to yearn for that old India in which officials were not given the right to enter our homes to decide what we should eat and drink. And who we choose to love.

There were many bad things about the old India that Rahul skipped carefully over in his letter, but he is right that the ideas that we once cherished are under serious threat. Marching from Kanyakumari to Kashmir may not solve the problem but we must concede that he is trying to make an important point.