Alarming Increase in Hatred: Love Your Neighbour as Yourself
By Rajmohan Gandhi
15 Aug 2024
Isn’t It Astonishing
That Our Ancient Land, So Rich In Wisdom, And Blessed With Suitable Quotations
From Centuries Past For Any Modern Crisis On Our Globe, Has So Completely
Forgotten The Simplest, Shortest And Wisest Advice That Human Beings Ever
Received, Which Was To Love Your Neighbour As Yourself?
------
Looking at
the state of the nation after 77 years of independence, I will start by
conceding that, compared with their parents and grandparents, millions of
Indians are much better off today. Many travel to far continents, build second
or even third homes in India for themselves and their families, and do other
things their forebears could not have imagined.
Express Illustration | Sourav Roy
-----
That’s one
part of the picture. Grimmer parts reveal galloping unemployment, young people
committing suicide, a frantic search for jobs anywhere in the world, even in
war zones, and other hurtful realities. Let me highlight two troubling features
that get poor notice.
The first
is India’s silence. “What?” Surely India is lively, bustling, noisy! Of course
it is, and much of the audible energy is heartening. Some silences are
admirable, too. Through meditation and yoga, some Indians not only transcend
unwelcome sounds, they find spiritual advance. Yet there is a disturbing
silence.
I speak of
the silence from platforms of prestige when hatred and contempt towards
particular groups of people is openly advocated, when the supremacy of the
strong and the humiliation of the weak are brazenly demanded, and when even
murder is explicitly asked for.
I used to
hear such poisonous calls a long time ago. That was in 1946 and 1947, when I
was a boy of 11 or 12. Growing up in Delhi and going to school there, I
breathed the fumes of fury and folly that accompanied the partition of what
then was the huge undivided province of Punjab until its August 1947 split into
India’s East Punjab and Pakistan’s West Punjab. (Later, East Punjab would split
into Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.)
In relative
terms, Bengal, the only other province that was cut into two halves, saw fewer
killings in 1947, through Bangladesh’s liberation struggle of 1971 would exact
a great carnage.
To return
to my boyhood in 1946-47, I also heard those calls of venom being immediately
and fearlessly denounced, above all by Mahatma Gandhi, but also by other
remarkable leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Rajaji,
Rajendra Prasad, Sarojini Naidu, Jayaprakash Narayan and Amrit Kaur.
In October
1946, when Noakhali, now part of Bangladesh, erupted with Hindus as victims,
Gandhi went there to stand, walk and live with the Hindus. To Noakhali’s
Muslims he spoke the blunt truth. From Noakhali, he went to Bihar, where
Muslims were the victims. Gandhi walked, stood and stayed with Bihar’s Muslims,
and spoke bluntly to Bihar’s Hindus.
In
September 1947, when Delhi saw violence, Nehru once stormed out of his
government vehicle on a road close to where I was growing up. He ran into the
rioters and told them: “Hit me first before you hit a helpless Muslim.”
Not seeing
or hearing anything even remotely like that in the last 10 years from leaders
of the government in New Delhi, I have felt hugely let down and also profoundly
sad. Moreover, the leaders’ extraordinary silence in face of threatening speech
and oppressive conduct has been matched by a similar silence, or even open
approval, on the part of others, including among those who control TV channels
and newspapers. The men of prestige who occupy Hinduism’s religious platforms
have also stayed mum.
My second
disturbing reality is the popularity of the ‘curse thy neighbour’ doctrine.
This doctrine is fervently preached within India for relationships between
states, between regions within a state, and between adjacent caste or
linguistic groups. It is not easy to think of two governments of neighbouring
states in India that enjoy a high degree of mutual trust and respect.
This
doctrine of limiting any warmth for the neighbour is also often kept in mind,
though seldom openly spelt out, when it comes to India’s relations with
adjacent countries.
Isn’t it
astonishing that our ancient land, so rich in wisdom, and blessed with suitable
quotations from centuries past for any modern crisis on our globe, has so
completely forgotten the simplest, shortest and wisest advice that human beings
ever received, which was to love your neighbour as yourself?
When, very
recently, the people of Bangladesh rose against a long spell of autocratic rule
and compelled the resignation of a lady who once was a brave young hero but had
sadly transformed herself into the head of a harsh and insensitive regime, what
was the first reaction of our government?
Addressing
the Rajya Sabha on August 5, the Union Minister for External Affairs, S
Jaishankar, said that the government was “monitoring the situation with regard
to the status of minorities” in the neighbouring country. Jaishankar was making
a perfectly legitimate point. Bangladesh’s minority Hindus have reasons for
anxiety, for the forces that were demanding Sheikh Hasina’s ouster included
groups espousing an ideology that frightened Hindus.
But what
about Bangladesh’s majority Muslims? Are these close neighbours of no concern
to us? Does their escape from autocracy give us no gladness? When most
Bangladeshis (including, we can be sure, many Hindus) opposed the Hasina
government’s extraordinary policy of reserving a truly hefty percentage of
government jobs for the children and grandchildren of the country’s freedom
fighters of 1971, was the people’s opposition not natural? Was it not
essential?
Hindus
living in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and
Afghanistan do not exhaust our neighbourhood. South Asia also contains Muslims,
Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs, and people of other faiths, or of no faith.
In 2020,
dislike of the Muslim neighbour went far enough for the government of Haryana
to even change the name of Faridabad’s Abdul Ghaffar Khan Hospital. Who was
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan? A dauntless foe of imperialism and of partition,
imprisoned by British and Pakistani rulers for a total of about 30 years, he
was a founding father of free India and also of free Pakistan.
Can only
they be neighbours who speak the language I speak, or belong to the caste or
religion to which I belong? Dear Pungundranar of the Tamil country, you who
taught us centuries ago that “every human is my kin and every town my home”, if
you can’t be reborn today, please at least invade the minds of girls and boys
in every corner of India.
-----
Source: The Deafening Silence Of A Noisy
Nation
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-politics/alarming-hatred-love-neighbour-yourself-/d/132951
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism