First they came for Harsha Hindu
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Sanghi.
Then they came for Umesh the pharmacist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a fool.
Then they came for Kanhaiya the tailor
And I did not speak out
Because I was afraid.
Then they came for my neighbour
And I did not speak out
Because it was not me.
Then they came for my faith
And I did not speak out
Because it was too late
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Fascism has many names, but only one goal.
Be it Hitler, or be it radical Islam.
That goal is extermination of those it considers ‘the other’.
In the case of Hitler, it was the Jews. For radical Islam, the enemy is the kafir – the unbeliever who does not subscribe to the faith.
Which is why for the bloodthirsty hordes running riot, the enemy is us.
The true extent of hatred for the kafir has been laid bare by the events of the past few days. It has forced the dismantling of the omerta surrounding it, imposed by the insidious ecosystem of the Islamists and the Left.
From chilling threats delivered in public squares to barbaric Islamic State inspired executions delivered to your television screen, the nation is clearly under genocidal attack.
An insidious fourth column that nobody was allowed to even mention, is brazenly running amuck in the streets.
The nation has woken up to gory videos, of innocent Hindus being brutally beheaded by Islamic fascists pin pointed to their hapless targets by treacherous neighbours and friends.
All this even as Nupur Sharma, who supposedly committed the original sin, cowers somewhere out of sight, the Damocles sword of Islamist rage hanging precariously over her head.
Everybody knows she had simply retaliated to multiple insults and mockery of her Lord Shiva by Islamist co-panelists. Especially the virtue-signallers who gleefully demand she be handed over to the pack.
Nobody cares that she has unfairly been singled out as the epitome of all evil, the villain of the piece.
Nobody cares, it seems, about justice, natural or otherwise.
Even as rabid Muslim mobs screaming ‘gustakhe nabi ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda, sar tan se juda’ or ‘there is only one punishment for insulting our prophet, separate her head from her body, separate her head from her body’, take over the streets, unchallenged and unpunished, nobody cares.
Even as the shell-shocked Hindu community shudders at the sheer brutality of the ISIS-style religious murders, wondering if they will be next on the hit list, nobody cares.
Not the political parties whose political futures depend on the Islamist vote.
Not even the political party who triumphantly rode to power on the Hindu one.
Their silence is a telling indictment of their complicity and betrayal.
The justifications are often as gruesome as the beheadings.
In any democracy that was truly one, there would have been a crackdown on the blood-thirsty devils openly baying for blood.
At the very least, there would have been a condemnation. An assurance from those we have entrusted our nation to, that all was not lost.
That was never to be.
The political party that had come to power pretending to be the defender of the Hindu faith were the first to throw Nupur Sharma under the bus.
Even as the streets reverberated with medieval calls for sharia beheadings, the leaders who ordinary Hindus believed would offer them protection went missing.
The conduct of the politicians laid bare every edifice that helped them to come to power. With very few exceptions.
From their meek surrender to Islamist street mobs, to their grovelling before the international Islamist cabal, the writing was on the wall.
Yet, for the ordinary Hindus on the streets, the betrayals had only begun.
The action – or inaction – was to soon shift to the honourable Supreme Court of India, as venerable an institution as any, and believed to be infallible by millions of ordinary Indians.
The honourable Supreme Court, the last resort for justice in the country, while maintaining a studied silence on the open calls for murder and beheadings, decided that the root cause of all the barbarism spilling out on the streets was one unfortunate comment, and hence the villain of the piece was one hapless woman – Nupur Sharma.
Their scathing attack included the incendiary observation that Nupur Sharma’s one comment – made many times earlier by men like Zakir Naik and their ilk – was justification for the gory beheadings in Udaipur and Amravati, and by implication for the many more to come.
The rush to punish the blasphemer was unseemly, murderous threats to her family and herself swatted away like flies on the wall.
The state of West Bengal, and its capital city Kolkata, once the scene of the Direct Action Day when thousands of Hindus were butchered in an attempt to frighten them into an exodus which would change the demography of the city, and allow it to be merged with Pakistan, had always been at the forefront of this pathetic witch-hunt.
Even before the ink could dry on the scandalous indictment of the beleaguered lady by the Supreme Court – with observations that would do a sharia court proud – the state’s chief minister ordered her police stations to issue a lookout notice for her.
Their intention – to force Nupur Sharma to travel to a part of the country where the Islamist writ openly runs, where the blood-lust of the barbaric Muslim street gangs didn’t stop at just stomach-curdling religious chants to behead her. The crowds, given a free hand by a supine, pliant state, rampaged for days in the streets, destroying Hindu shops, properties and just about anything else they could lay their hands on.
The hypocrisy of the cowards witch-hunting Nupur soon became as clear as daylight.
Days after the look-out notices by the Kolkata police to force Nupur to travel to the city, a leading member of the Trinamool Congress Party made some statements mocking Goddess Kali, widely revered by Hindus across the world.
The same political party which had till now been baying for Nupur Sharma’s blood suddenly changed their position on religious blasphemy, and after a token distancing from the culprit, began to display their hypocrisy aggressively, and shamelessly.
The hypocrisy was embarrassing even for the most neutral of observers.
On being asked why his party so clearly held two religions to two different standards, the party spokesman went on to say that the Hindus themselves didn’t think what the lady – one Miss Moitra – had said was sufficiently blasphemous at all.
When prodded further on what gave him that impression, his answer revealed what every Hindu in the country has already begun to believe, with each passing day.
The esteemed spokesman of the Trinamool Party said that following the derogatory comments of Mahua Mitra, there had been no ‘protests’ – he meant no rioting, no burning public property or Hindu ones, no calls for beheadings, even no beheadings – so how could anybody deduce that Hindus were feeling aggrieved at all!
Which brings us to the existential question. The answer to which could actually decide whether the Hindu community would be allowed to exist with any modicum of pride – or the way things seemed to be headed, be allowed to simply exist at all.
Can the ordinary Hindu expect to be able to survive in India – the only nation they can really call their own – without their Gods being ridiculed, without surrendering whatever self-esteem they still had been able to preserve?
Can the ordinary Hindu expect to not be murdered just for defending his faith – simply with words – or even simply for backing those who had dared to do so?
Can the ordinary Hindu ever expect justice from the institutions of the country – the courts, the political class, the media, the police?
The courts, which openly shame the victim.
The political class, which encourages the Islamist gangs.
The media, complicit at most times.
The police, which seldom acts against the Islamists.
All indications are, the answers to all these questions is no.
Which brings me back to where I started. If the state will abdicate its responsibility towards us, who do we turn to?
In the year 1946, destiny asked the same question of the Hindus of Bengal.
Even as Jinnah declared 16th August as Direct Action Day, and planned the brutal annihilation of Hindus in an attempt to make Kolkata a Muslim-majority city, one man was soon to become the saviour for the Hindus of Bengal.
His name was Gopal Chandra Mukherjee, but he was better known by his nickname Gopal Patha.
Even as the Islamists ran riot, and the bodies began to pile along Calcutta’s streets, their nemesis was gathering his men for the fightback.
According to historians and eyewitnesses alike, the resistance mounted by Gopal Patha inspired the brutalized Hindus of Kolkata to take on the Islamist murderers, and mount a ferocious counterattack that led to the Muslim League and its street gangs running scared, driving away not just the murderers, but any hopes they had of forcing Kolkata to merge with Pakistan.
Gopal Patha was moved by the death and destruction around him. He knew that the police under the Muslim League was complicit in the genocide.
He knew the only way for the Hindus to survive was to defend themselves.
He knew that nobody else would.
Gopal Patha, the saviour of Bengal passed away in 2005, ignored and often ostracized by the very city he had saved from merger with Pakistan, and the disaster sure to follow.
The term used to justify this wretched ungratefulness being, more often than not, secularism.
With no malice towards the abettors who stayed quiet when the Direct Action Day unfolded, and hushed up the story of this brave son of Bengal for over 75 years, I believe the time has come once again.
Because while it may be somebody else’s daughter who is threatened today, or someone else’s father who is beheaded, the day is not far when the monster will be hungry for more and more innocents to threaten, rape or murder, for insults perceived or real.
The choice may be difficult, yet it must be made.
Continue to stay silent, and pretend it is somebody else’s problem.
Or be man enough to prepare ourselves, for when the barbarians come for us.
Well written Anirudha!