ARISE INDIA 37 ... NOR MINORITY, NOR MAJORITY, JUST INDIAN

ARISE INDIA 37 ... NOR MINORITY, NOR MAJORITY, JUST INDIAN

The Muslims should not call themselves a minority when they are in such large numbers in India relative to the minuscule population of the Parsees who never address themselves as such. The Parsees have wholly identified themselves as Indians and not as distinctive Parsees, and so must the Muslims. The Muslims are Indians and nothing more, nothing less. This ascription of minority status does them no good. It rather alienates them and keeps them apart as a separate community from the Hindus which fractures the polity and makes India weak. Cultural differences must not be so deep and ingrained that it threatens national unity. All Indians -- Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Jews and all other denominations of human religious-cultural affiliation -- are fundamentally Indians as per the Constitution of India despite their distinctive differences in certain mores and manners, ways and means, habits and practices. This should be the national stance that we are all Indians and not Hindu Indians, Muslim Indians etc. This alone is the way ahead as Swami Vivekananda had so prophetically articulated when he said : "I see in my mind's eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body." Let this profound statement seek its fulfilment through our conscious effort at being Indians first and not Hindus, Muslims, Christians before being Indians. Conversion should be banned by law so that the age-old mistrust of Islam and Christianity and their respective adherents goes for good from the Hindu mind and the nation in turn emerges from its present fractured state to health and happiness, strong and integrated like never before. May the God of India's fortune, Bharatbhagyavidhata, grant us this boon !

Written by Sugata Bose