Secularists/ Liberals amongst us must realize that honesty is the biggest prerequisite of being a secularist

File Photo

The Secularists/ Liberals amongst us, including me, must realize that honesty is the biggest prerequisite for being a secularist. If we condemn X but justify Y on public platforms, we are being downright dishonest, harming the social fabric as much as those lynch mobs with their obtuse belief systems.

Freedom of expression, right to dissent… all this is fine. I’m the biggest votary of the same. But pockets of Muslim populations celebrating India’s defeat with such pronounced happiness is neither. And it cannot be sugarcoated with isms, theories, and historical/ moral/ emotional arguments to make it sound like whatever either. If we are justifying or encouraging it, then we shouldn’t sound surprised when the next set of Bharat Mata Ki Jai lynchings happen.

The Muslim community has, unfortunately, been plagued by an acute sense of mistrust over the last seventy years. Such celebrations of India’s defeat and Pakistan’s victory do not really help the cause. Why, they even offer a perverse justification of the Go-To-Pakistan routine, come to think of it. These firecracker fucks don’t realize how they are harming their community and leading the nation to places that the Patriot gang is going to love being in!

We can defend their acts and actions through our conditioned-air led platitudes and keep underlining our liberal creds. But then we must also be honest enough to take cognizance of the fact that acts like these contribute to the Hindu-Muslim divide in India. They make the Muslims come across as a set of people who do not belong in here. Which is the saddest thing that can happen to India.

If I have a strong point of view on the gau-rakshak brand of nationalism, then I should be honest enough to have an equally strong opinion on the firecracker brand of anti-nationalism. Because that’s precisely what it is.

Or I can continue to play the ostrich. More fashionable, I suppose.

-Vaibhav Vishal

Vaibhav Vishal is a writer based in Mumbai. He can be found at www.ofnosurnamefame.com