Yesterday I was watching WWE on tv and during one of the commercial breaks i happened to stumble across a news channel which was showing sikh mobs in a violent frenzy. I thought that this might be a footage of the post-operation-bluestar protest. But news channel after news channel showed the same footage and then i realised that the bottom ticker red "Punjab burning- Dera Controversy".... Apparently some person from the dera sachcha had dressed up like guru gobind singh and distributed "amrit", the akal takht declared that the sikhs should boycott the sect.
Now, herein comes the twists. Apparently, the highly educated and liberal minded [atleast i thought so] sikhs did not know the correct meaning of boycott, and instead started out on a mission to decimate the last trace of the sect. The Akali Government and the administration/police were a mute spectator to the taandav on the streets of the peaceful-at-last Punjab.... Have we Indians lost all sanity? The ghost of religious/social intolerance is taking its toll on the resurgent indian social structure. Every day I listen to news that some "religious" group is protesting some "anti-Indian" activityby someone. Comeon people, do we not have anything better to do, rather than file PILs against Shilpa Shetty, Richard Gere, and all and sundry just because they seem to offend our so-called "religious" sentiments.
I also heard a sikh cleric declaring that if the punjab police does not arrest the dera chief then they would deal with him themselves. What cheek? but it does not come as a surprise to me. After all in this "democracy", all have a right to express their own opinion. Be it the LeT furling its flags in Jammu, or Uma Bharti declaring her love for govindacharya.... the entire repartee of comical incidents in this country is amazing.
We do not give a tiny-rat's-ass about 90% of infants dying in the kalahandi region of orissa, or the caste murders in rajasthan.... or the muslim clerics declaring a fatwa against a muslim girl marrying a hidu girl.... but the news channels are agog with pictures of a marriage that was solemnised on the telephone, or a supposedly "haunted" police chowki in UP....
The Pannoy Roys, Arnab Goswamis and Barkha Dutts need to stand up and take notice, for there might soon be a time when Star News looks more like Zoom....
And some collar mongering needs to be done by the common folk of our only-god-can-help-it-but-our-netas-wont-allow-them-cuz-gods-dont-vote country, as to why such religious and social intolerance is developing in the country which once took pride in its multi-ethnic antecedents....
THINK
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