Today, 18 Dec, is Minority Rights Day. India should celebrate this day heart and soul for various reasons.
First of all, as Shashi
Tharoor claims in his new book The Battle for Belonging, everyone in
India is in the minority one way or another. Take this example from Tharoor
himself:
A typical Indian stepping off
a train, say, a Hindi-speaking Hindu male from Uttar Pradesh might cherish the
illusion that he represents the ‘majority community’. He’s wrong, of course. As
a Hindu he belongs to the faith adhered to by some 80% of the population, but his
language, his caste, his state and its culture – none of these belongs to the
majority. If he is visiting a state in the Northeast, he will be astounded by
the realization of how much of a minority he really is. He will be quite an
alien among the Garos of Meghalaya and the Kukis of Nagaland. The diversity of tiny
Arunachal Pradesh alone will be enough to strip him of any hubris about a
singular national culture. Why, in his own religion he will be a minority. If
he is a Brahmin, 90% of his fellow Indians are not. If he is a Yadav, 85% of
Indians are not, and so on.
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| Defenders of Majority |
“We are all minorities in India,” concludes Dr
Tharoor. Castes, creeds, colours, cultures, cuisines, convictions, consonants,
costumes, and customs… So many Cs that are held together by another C:
Consensus. Consensus is the soul of democracy. It teaches us that we don’t need
to agree all the time except on the ground rules of how we will disagree.
But, unfortunately, we now
have a regime that labours under too many delusions. It assumes that there is a majority
here to whom the country rightfully belongs. Only to them. The others have no
rights. So there are blatant assaults on people belonging to certain
communities. The government itself has made the assaults not only legal but
also a moral obligation of every patriot.
Look at it from another angle.
Take the example of the present
farmers’ agitation. The farmers constitute about 65% of the country’s
population. So they are a majority, so to say. The government and the private
sector together employ a tiny minority of the country’s population. Yet this
minority bosses over everybody else. Who decides the policies for the country,
for instance?
When thousands of Adivasis are displaced
from their forests in the name of development, are they consulted? No. The ‘majority’
[here, Adivasis] who are affected are never asked any questions or given any
options. A small minority formulate the policies. A small minority decide to
whom the forests should belong hereafter.
A small minority decide to
whom the water bodies and water resources should belong hereafter. Thousands of
fisherfolk suddenly
find themselves displaced from their homes and jobs for the sake of Special
Economic Zones or Special Ports or whatever.
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| Majority? |
What is wrong basically? A minority sits somewhere in an
ivory tower and makes up policies. That’s what’s wrong. This minority has its
own vested interests. That’s what’s wrong. This minority is pretending to be
working for the majority. That’s an absolute lie.
Too many things are wrong
about the present governance in India. People have been fooled by one man’s
rhetoric and a collective delusion of national grandeur. You think you belong
to the majority. Really? Think deeper; rub off the patina from your brain and
think.
Love the example of everybody in being in the minority, in our populous country! A very humbling perspective.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. This diversity is India's greatest wealth, I think. No one should try to pulverise it into a deadening homogeneity in the name of things like nationalism.
DeleteWell said.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteInteresting thought about a "a benefit being imposed"! Yet sadly the very thing is happening... Remember ever having heard this line "I give you an offer, you cannot refuse.."
ReplyDeleteQuite a terrible situation.
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