ENOUGH OF MINORITY AND MAJORITY

Fear of social reaction has harnessed the free speech of many an ardent thinker who simply have not the courage to back up their convictions and express what they do in confidence to their near and dear ones. It is time they muster some courage and stand in the sunshine of articulate condemnation of everything that is going wrong in our society in terms of minority appeasement to collect votes when the mandate of the people supposedly determine their fate.

The minority must not allow themselves to be appeased for it is against their interests to be considered specially privileged in the polity which then will effectively sideline their development to keep the status quo of their inferior development for future vote-bank politics. Such a refusal to be appeased will serve the minority communities better in the long run as their improved integration thus into the body politic of the nation will in turn help evolve their socioeconomic status and supply them their basic necessities better for life to be more bearable. As of now it is merely an eyewash that political parties everywhere are up to with their declarations before elections of their welfare intent and their failed execution of such during their tenure. What little they do for the minorities is of a cosmetic nature with no economic consequence of any significance. Social allowances of religious practices to a pronounced degree is merely a cover-up for the deeper agenda of keeping the minority community as the trump card for electoral benefits and have no real intent of their development in the cards. This the minority communities should understand and refuse anymore to foolishly collaborate with.

The demographic situation also does not augur well for the land as the influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh through the porous borders of West Bengal is tilting the population scales significantly in favour of the minority community in many a region, creating inevitable social tension and, at the worst, riots. Such border porosity is detrimental to the country's security interests as well as the interests of social cohesion.

All these are contentious issues in a world that is perpetually in flux and is encountering terrorism of a noxious kind. It is all the more important, thus, that thinkers stop playing it safe and come out into the open with articulate condemnation of all that is wrong in the polity and suggestions as to how the situation, desperately distraught, may be yet salvaged. It is with this hope that I pen these lines tonight and exhort all my sisters and brothers who have a clear thinking head on their shoulders to come forward and resist this minority appeasement in the name of their development. Surely, the minorities deserve a better deal than this dole which is being dished them and ought to themselves resist any such malefic move made against their best interests. After all, are the minorities not equal Indians? Then why privilege for them? Let all be considered equal citizens of the land instead of minority and majority and, so, let all have an equal ploughshare in the cultivation of the national soil and an equal reaping of the harvest thereof. Enough of minority and majority. Let all such distinctions cease and let the nation stand together as an integrated unit with a solidarity of resolve to progress towards a brighter morrow. Jai Hind!