By P. A. Chacko

Sahibganj, Jan 3, 2022: That India is being taken to a suicidal precipice is not a mirage. It is the decided agenda of the rightwing BJP led government at the centre, and in some states, that the secular democratic set up of the nation is done away with.

This agenda is being executed on a fast and furious track. The army of foot soldiers, hired mercenaries, sadhus and sadwins, cunning politicians and host of rightwing acolytes is active. They call for rewriting the Constitution; they chisel off its secular contours, destroy its democratic fabric, and demolish all traces of freedom of religion.

They deify Godse, the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, and hail him as national hero for doing such a ‘heroic’ task. They even call on the police and the army to take up arms to eliminate the Indian minority communities.

The Modi government is fiddling while the saffron mahants and their ilk have declared a genocidal war against the Muslims and the Christians. Those who have declared such anti-national agenda with their war cry for a civil war go scotfree, or are booked under bailable sections to get off the hook.

Their call for Congress-mukt Bharat (India free of the Congress Party) has now graduated to the call for minorities-mukt Bharat. They distort historical facts by propagating the idea that the Aryan race was the earliest entrants into the Indian subcontinent and, hence, they have the sole prerogative to govern this nation as their paternal inheritance and Hindu monarchy.

Hence, their modus operandi is nothing short of the German Aryan race’s elimination of the Jewish race. The genocidal war on the non-Aryans in Germany, led by History’s most hated ruler, Hitler, led to subjecting six million Jews to execution in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. It is time for Modi to tell the nation whether he wants such a holocaust to take place in India? If not, if any such eventuality occurs, he will have to face condemnation alongside Hitler.

In the present predicament, what should the minorities do? They should assert their faith in the secular democratic framework of the Indian Constitution. They should leave no stones unturned to ask hard questions to the Parliamentarians and the Judiciary if they want to avert this tragedy or if they want to be party to the genocidal call of the anti-national and communal forces.

Should not all minorities come under one umbrella, irrespective of their caste and creed, political affiliation or community orientation, to cry foul and denounce the satanic forces that are attempting to destroy the foundations of our nation?

The ‘third wave’ of poisonous spread of the Hindu rightwing ideology needs to be stopped in its track before it engulfs the nation in a conflagration. If our minority community leaders do not step out of their secure precincts to guide and lead us to a peaceful resistance at this historic juncture, they will be condemned as party to the impending civil war through silent complicity. Time is running out. Even retired army Generals and Admirals are standing up and speaking up without mincing worlds. They denounce the dangerous move of calling the police and the army to take up arms against the minorities.

Where are the minority community leaders? We need their guidance. We want to see if they have the nerve and the backbone to stand up without wanting to play safe politics or greenhouse games. If they do not act now, they will be denounced by their followers and will be thrown into the waste heap of history as collaborators of a sinister game of arrogant power politics.

(Jesuit Father P A Antony works among tribal people in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.)