Remember the time Yakub Memon was executed? Did you ever get the feeling that a certain class of editors, journalists, academics and intellectuals seemed to care more for the life of the terrorist than the innocent people who were blown to bits? Do you ever get the feeling that the lives of stone pelters and Maoists and jihadists are valued more in our country than the martyrdom of our soldiers?

Remember how much of the political class had tears in its eyes when Lashkar operative Ishrat Jahan was killed? Or when terrorists were killed in the Batla House encounter? Have you ever noticed that these people heap scorn and ridicule on those who say “Bharat Mata ki Jai,” but those who say “Bharat Tere Tukde Honge” are invited to lavish thinkfests?

This might have made you wonder: why do these people live in India at all, feeding off our land? These people don’t like Indian soldiers, the Indian nation, the majority Hindu community. These people see greatness in Aurangazeb, but they revile Swami Vivekananda. They hate India so much that they publish source based stories supporting the enemy’s propaganda line on Kulbhushan Jadhav, perhaps because they would gladly see him hanged in a Pakistani prison.

Then why do these people stay Indian?

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Let me explain, with the help of a story. It’s from a Youtube video about the natural world from National Geographic. See if you can find any parallels with the fate of Hindus in India. And, by the way, if you have watched any horror movies recently, this is going to top that.

This may appear to you like a perfectly healthy caterpillar. Like, you know, a healthy democracy, with mostly free and fair elections held every five years at each level (with distinguished exceptions for Panchayat polls in some secular states). The caterpillar has eaten a lot of leaves and begun to grow fat. Like India, the fastest growing major economy in the world.

But there is something else going on underneath its skin.

A parasitic wasp has laid its eggs inside the caterpillar and the larvae have hatched. Every single larva is small, no more than the size of a grain of rice. Each individual larva is no match for the caterpillar. But there are so many of them and they have infected every part of the body of the caterpillar.

The larvae are still growing and need to keep the host alive. They drink the caterpillar’s blood but don’t touch its vital organs…yet. Meanwhile, the larvae have grown sharp teeth to cut through the caterpillar’s thick skin.

These teeth begin to saw open the body of the caterpillar. Here is the ‘Tukde Tukde moment‘ as the parasites burst into the open.

The caterpillar, meanwhile, still doesn’t have a clue. Its body is paralyzed and its brain is muddled due to chemicals released by the parasitic wasp larvae.

But the parasites are not yet done with the caterpillar. The poor creature must live on, for the wasp larvae still need it to serve an important purpose.

In fact, once they are outside, the wasp larvae are exposed and at much more risk.

Now the brutal magic trick begins. Remember how the caterpillar is supposed to weave a silk cocoon around itself and go into the pupa stage?

The caterpillar goes ahead and weaves that cocoon. But, instead of weaving the cocoon around itself, it weaves the protective cocoon around the parasitic wasps.

This happened because the chemicals released by the parasites have hijacked the caterpillar’s brain. Do you now see why the left places such emphasis on the capture of the intelligentsia?

Incredibly, the caterpillar believes that it is protecting itself, rather than its enemy.

The caterpillar even sits on guard, aggressively warding off all intruders, while the parasitic wasp larvae are safe inside the silken blanket.

Ultimately, of course, the caterpillar starves to death.

There are many lessons here that we must imbibe in order to avoid becoming like the caterpillar.

The intellectual ecosystem, like the ecosystem in our natural world, is also amoral. The wasps did not have ‘double standards,’ nor did they want to discriminate against the caterpillar. They simply saw a way to thrive by fooling the caterpillar out of existence. If we let our brains be infected, the same could happen to us.