Opinion Tavleen Singh writes: It is now a battle between an older, civilised India and a barbaric new India

These trolls usually spout venom from anonymous handles, but this time most did not try to conceal their links to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Some declared proudly that they were members of Modi’s ‘parivar’ and others said that they were proud to be followed by Narendra Modi. What sickened me was that the trolling was less about Urdu and more about me personally. My private life was dragged through the mire and there was so much filth flung at me that I ended up staying away from X. What was particularly repugnant was that many of the comments were replete with sexual innuendos that should have no place in public discourse.

When I sat back to examine the trolling dispassionately, I remembered what the Prime Minister said when he visited RSS headquarters earlier this month. The RSS is Narendra Modi’s Alma Mater, and this was his first visit after becoming prime minister, so he made an eloquent speech about how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in its 100 years of existence has been like a banyan tree that has kept alive India’s ancient history and traditions. And now it has taken up the task of making these ancient civilizational values part of India’s journey as a modern nation.

Not true, Prime Minister. Not true at all. What the RSS has been responsible for is imposing on India’s ancient values and culture a hard veneer of hatred and belligerence that spawns the trolls who abused me last week. It has been responsible for taking the most enlightened and modern idea of religion in the world and turning it into a narrower, more limited thing that is motivated so deeply by hatred of Muslims that a language can acquire a religious identity. The trolls I encountered last week accused me of supporting the language of invaders and advised me to go to Pakistan.

Since these trolls identified themselves as belonging to Modi’s family, they share the ideology and worldview of the RSS. When the Prime Minister praised his Alma Mater for being the banyan tree of India’s ancient civilization it is surprising that he did not notice that the fruits of this tree are all religious? The RSS ‘thinkers’ appear to be oblivious to those vital components of civilization like art, music, literature and poetry. Where are the scholars, writers, historians and intellectuals in that vast RSS tent? Why is it trolls that swarm angrily and violently around in that tent instead of people who have a basic idea of what the word civilization means?

It is a sad thing to admit but my encounter with the trolls last week made me realize that there is indeed a new India that has been born in the past ten years, and it is more uncivilized than the India in which I grew up. Our political parties have unfortunately reduced the fight as being between secularism and communalism when it is much more than that. What is happening is a battle between an older, civilized India and a rough, barbaric new India.

It worries me that nobody in the higher echelons of power has noticed yet that the essence of Indian civilization, as it once was, is being slowly erased. Under the gleaming new airports and the fancy new highways what is being crushed is the spiritual soul of India and it is being crushed by people who believe they are nationalists and patriots. The truth is that they are no more than religious fanatics. They do what they do to impress the political leaders they serve by spreading hatred and violence in the name of Hindutva. You need to be fanatical to the point of lunacy if you can waste your time taking out your rage on a language that you do not have to speak if you do not wish to.

If the RSS wants to be the banyan tree that will help India’s ancient civilization survive then it is time to spawn some scholars and thinkers. Instead of venomous social media trolls.