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Memories of my childhood are the sweetest. Every year my dad used to take me to a buddhist temple on the eve of Buddh Purnima & we used to light a candle & pray, on the eve of Christmas we used to go to a church & see the celebrations of the birth of lord christ, In Muharram my dad used to take us to see the Tazia procession, on krishna janamashtmi we used to go to see the jhanki of krishna.
In durga pooja we used to go to the various pandals of goddess durga & watch the splendour of our traditions & culture.
In Dussehra, we used to go to fairs & watch rawan dahan in the late evening after which the leftover bamboo remnant were taken away by people in the belief that keeping it at home keeps away evil spirits & bad omen.
I have always loved the multicultural, multiplural, multiethnic diversity of various faiths, castes & religions which shaped has up my country over the years.
But in recent years when I see mob lynching & vigilante justice by a group of gau rakshaks who have taken law & justice in their own hands really shocks me & saddens me. When the victims are not given proper justice then the democratic values are in tatters.
When some politician or an organisation says boycott muslims & then approaches the roadside eateries & shop and issues a directive to the shopkeeper to write their name on it to reveal whether he is a hindu or a muslim , then we regress ourselves like our neighbouring countries where fanatic majoritarian politics has taken its toll on Pakistan, sri lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan.
When we become numb to the atrocities committed to the shudras by the high caste hindus then we really as a society need to rethink, when we don’t react or protest to the mob lynching or demonising the entire muslim of India then we fail as a society.
When we fail to rise as a responsible citizen against any atrocity or injustice committed on our fellow citizens then we fail as a human being & our sensibilities as an Indian is derailed forever.
To build a strong nation each and every citizen contributes in his own way but trying to marginalize anyone based on his religion or caste diminishes our old culture of acceptance & tolerance.
The chest thumping nationalism & hindu majoritarian politics & blaming the past for all the present woes will do more harm than good to the country.
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