Rana Pratap’s Haldighati or an Ashokan Kalinga?

Thanks to the whirlwind sweeping our beloved Bharat for the last few years, kind courtesy a “gang” of criminals possessed, we stare at the twin spectacle all around, of recreated Haldighatis and the body-carpeted battlefields of Ashokan Kalinga.

There is the deliberately planned abuse of everything pre-2014, including the Father of the Nation and the Country’s independence, the vicious attacks on those who do not publicly conform to the Theology of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra [Hindu State], a concerted effort to disenfranchise India’s 20%, the minority religions, through the devious enactment of the twin Acts named CAA & NRC and their proposed dubious implementation.

There are the open calls to arms with the avowed aim of massacring 16% of India’s population, the Muslims, the regular denigration of Christians (including denying permission to the Pope to cross over the border from neighbouring Bangladesh while on an official state visit there) and the desecration or destruction of their religious places.

The anti-national adoration of the murderers of the Mahatma, the blatant public murders of Muslims, falsely accusing them of “cow slaughter”, organising anti-Muslim riots, arson, lootings and killings, whenever out of political power – all these point to the real possibility of the dire prediction recently made by Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, about the impending slaughter of nearly a million Muslims by the Hindutva Brigade, coming true.

There can be no two opinions that the Christian Community is a peaceful one. This Community has, since independence, set standards of consistent public service, nondiscrimination, and batting, with committed love, for the downtrodden, the deprived, the marginalised and those sections of societies, who struggle to survive.

In India the Christians have, over the last 74-plus years, remained a measly 2% of the population. Numerically they are so insignificant that they can easily be squashed by the rampaging, marauding and possessed Hindutva criminal mobs, roaming the once peaceful streets and neighbourhoods of our Country.

Despite their small numbers and constant persecution, the contribution of the Christians to the building of our Nation and Nationhood, stands out like a magical full moon.

Be it education, medical care, seeing to the needs of those society has discarded, living a marginalised life, the voiceless, the poor, the downtrodden, the deprived and the Untouchables, the Christian Community, consisting of its lay and religious (comprising brothers, sïsters, deacons, nuns and priests) has worked tirelessly and ceaselessly to provide care, voice and a place of their own under the Sun.

And the Muslims, most surely, will not take things lying down, if and when their very existence is endangered by an openly Fascist Government and its para-state actors, the Hindutva Brigade.

The Muslims will fight back. Those in the Armed Forces may revolt.

The spectre of civil war is looming large: 80% vs 20%.

The ongoing daylight loot and arson, lynchings of people from targeted communities and others who stand up for them, as well as the selective destruction of their properties and institutions, are too glaring for the United Nations Community not to have taken notice.

As a result, we have, in the last seven years, steadily slipped down the International ladders on every conceivable count, notwithstanding the meteoric showers of lies pouring from the throats of this motley gang and its drooling National Media.

The so called, self styled, saffron wearing “sants”, their foreheads pasted with sandalwood and vermillion, armed with vituperative and violence spitting tongues, professing to represent the Majority Community - whose numbers, despite the repeated cry of ‘the Hindu is in Danger’, have remained undiminished at around 80 percent of the quadrupled population of our Country over the last 74 years - have consistently got away after poisoning the entire polity of the Country.

Instead of being locked up in solitary confinement for unbridled collective conspiracy to destroy the very foundation of our Nation, Nationhood, our ancient Culture and its unique concept of Universal Brotherhood (विश्व कुटुम्बकम्), these monsters roam free with impunity, further emboldening them and their cohorts, to spread terror all around.

So my beloved sisters, brothers and friends of Bharat, I put it to you…

Why shouldn’t the fire-spitting, foulmouthed among the Maulvis, pretending to represent the entire Muslim Community, which is around 16% of India’s population, be given the same laxity and freedom to pay back in the same coin, the gangs of the arsonist, looters and lynchers of the Hindutva Brigade, egged on by the self styled “Hindu Sant Samaj”, who call themselves arch defenders of the faith of Hindus, and the very existence of 80% of India's population?

Today, because of constant battering by incessant screams of “Hindu is in danger”, a significant section of Hindu Indians have started to believe that their community, 80% of the nation is under the threat of extinction from the remaining 20% and, therefore, are on the verge of responding to and accepting the “Call to Arms” against the non-Hindus.

They forget that 90% of Bali is Hindu and they live peacefully in Muslim majority Indonesia.

The Hindutva Brigade is also unmindful of the likelihood of blood bath against those Hindus who live in small communities the World over, especially in our neighbouring predominantly Muslim countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives, not to speak of our own, 95% Muslim, Union Territory of Lakshwadeep.

The State of Law and Order in the Country has become a mute spectator. General chaos has taken deep roots.

Though born a Hindu, I will never do a Ghar Wapsi, and I am not sure if, in the worst case scenario, even as a Veteran soldier, my Christian beliefs will prevent me from getting carried away in the frenzied atmosphere and, thus, taking sides against a marauding Hindutva Army, leading to the killing of innocents, including my innocent Hindu kith and kin.

Anyhow…

The state of the economy of our Country is in the doldrums and has been pushed down into the abyss.

Once the exemplarily shining India, cynosure of the World, was emerging to the top on every International rating parameter, but today it is rubbing shoulders with those at the bottom.

Our Ganga-Yamuna Tehzeeb is all but obsolete.

Shall we, then, remain mute spectators and let the mayhem and the fratricide continue, recreating the 18 June 1576 battle at Haldighati, between cavalry and archers supporting the King of Mewar, Maharana Pratap and the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s forces, led by Man Singh of Amber, where just 500 died?

Even worse, would it be a recreation of the intense battle at Kalinga, in 261 BC, where, after it was all over, Emperor Ashok was shocked to view a heart-wrenching sea of dead bodies, as far as his eyes could see?

I, therefore, call upon you my Countrywomen and men to

STAND UP & BE COUNTED.

while there is still time.

God save us all and our beloved Bharat.

Colonel Samuel Dhar is retired from the Indian Army.