Last year, while resigning from the Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Shah Faesal made it amply clear he treats himself as a Kashmiri Muslim playing victimhood, much unlike the millions of other Indian citizens, whose singular identity is their Indianness, irrespective of which region, religion, caste or creed they belong to. In his Facebook post, which was basically a ruse to launch his insipid political career, he wrote he was resigning, “To protest against the unabated killings in Kashmir, and lack of any sincere reach-out from the Union government; the marginalization and invisiblization of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces reducing them to second-class citizens”. Shah Faesal’s hypocrisy would be funny, had it not been such an outrageous bunch of concocted lies against Hindus.

Perhaps he was never told, despite being less than 1 per cent of India’s population and accounting for less than 1 per cent of India’s GDP, the State of Jammu & Kashmir, gets more than 10 per cent of the Union government’s allocated funds and within that 10 per cent, a large chunk goes to Muslims in Kashmir valley, at the expense of hard working, honest, Hindu tax payers from all over the country. That Faesal has never castigated or even expressed scant remorse for the cold night of 19th January 1990,which aided and abetted the genocide of Kashmiri pandits who were looted, raped, plundered, murdered and forced to flee from their homes, is of course, taking hypocrisy of Faesal and many of his ilk to a new level altogether.

Another case of hypocrisy from the “Intolerantly Lutyenised Khan Market Brigade” is the recent case of Amit Shukla, who refused delivery of food from Zomato, as the delivery boy was Muslim. Zomato got a lot of appreciation initially, after it tweeted, “Food has no religion. Food is a religion.” But Zomato’s abhorrent double standards came to light after an old tweet where a user had asked Zomato for a refund because they were wrongly charging him for non-Halal meat, when he had ordered for Halal meat. To this, Zomato had very submissively replied, “We would look into this”.

More recently, the dissenters’ hypocrisy surpassed limits when a letter by “49 liberally intolerant” personalities led by the likes of Aparna Sen, to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, reportedly, on the growing intolerance in India, has triggered a fresh debate on whether the largest democracy in the world has indeed become intolerant. Well, the pointed answer to that is a vehement–No! India has always been a multi lingual, multi racial and a multi religious country. That said, it is a fact that almost 80 per cent of the Indian population consists of peace loving and progressive Hindus, who have seen their rituals being mocked at, their religious chants like ‘Jai Shree Ram’ being disparaged, their traditions being trampled upon and their cultural diversity being appropriated by wily politicians and successive, erstwhile, Congress led regimes that have celebrated Hinduphobic narratives and denied Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism as it is popularly known, its rightful place of pride—and yes, all this, under the guise of “Secularism”.

Of course, secularism as a socio-political ideology is welcome, but pseudo secularism that thrives on tyranny by the radicalised “minorities”, who believe in illegal religious conversions and convenient application of the Constitution, only to suit their vested interests, while deriving maximum benefits from State sponsored largesse, have forced Hindus, who for decades, maintained a stoic silence, to finally assert themselves and stand up as one. That “62 celebrities” led by the fiesty Kangana Ranaut and the notable Prasoon Joshi, wrote to PM Modi, as a rebuttal to the ” 49″,is in fact, a microcosm of a larger trend, where Hindus are no longer apologetic of being the dominant religious sect.

Unfortunately, those who are quick to make baseless allegations of India becoming “Lynchistan”, are the very pseuds who simply do not understand the difference between “Majority” and “Majoritarian”. This is the same lot that pretends to be a beacon of liberal and progressive ideas but goes into hiding when Jisha, a young law student from Ernakulam, is raped, stabbed 30 times and killed by Ameerul Islam, out of sheer lust and hate. Again, this lot that fears “Jai Shree Ram”, which is simply a peaceful, religious greeting and a clarion call that unifies Hindus, had nothing to say when an armed and murderous mob of thousands, shouting “Alla Hu Akbar”, brandishing swords and knives, burnt down a police chowki, ran amok vandalising public property and abetting violent communal unrest at Malda in Bengal, in 2016. And yes,this is the very lot which screams hoarse about cow vigilantism but has not once spoken out against marauding cattle smugglers who hacked Naresh Saini, a peaceful Gaurakshak to death, at Hissar in Haryana, or the brutal killing of Gaurakshak Gaurav, at Palwal in Haryana, by cattle smugglers, in July 2019. Saini is just one among the many, who have been slaughtered by the beef mafia which has scant regard for the law of the land, which makes cow slaughter a punishable offence. When a Dalit man, Harish Jatav was lynched to death my a mob led by one Umar Sher, in a Congress ruled state, no outrage was registered by the left-liberals and when his father committed suicide this week, again, no outrage was seen, no placards sprang up.

The “Khan Market Gang” that epitomizes the illiberal intolerance of the fake liberals, in more ways than one, never fails to surprise and this was evident yet again, when it chose to feign ignorance when a CBI court in Ranchi framed charges against Raqibul Hassan, alias Ranjit Kohli, for allegedly giving false information about his religion while marrying national-level air rifle shooter Tara Shahdeo, in what is a grim reminder of the pervasive nature of “Love Jihad”, that has systematically wreaked havoc with the lives of Hindu women and is no longer an isolated practice.

It is worth mentioning here that while Hindus are in majority in India, the Modi government is certainly not majoritarian. It truly believes in “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwaas”.

However, “Sabka Saath”, also means taking pride in chanting “Jai Shree Ram”, as much as it is about worshipping “Gau Mata”, or celebrating the oneness of yoga and reclaiming our abandoned, old temples that were ravaged by marauding mughals, centuries back. And what makes the Modi government stand out is the fact that it is not apologetic about the richness of Hinduism, its sages, saints, rishis, gurus, vedas, shankaracharyas, mutts, et al. This is precisely what the pseudo secular lobby is not able to digest. So while the “Radicalised Minoritarian Lobby” does not think twice before blaring “Azaan” from loudspeakers, five times a day, flouting umpteen court rulings, Hindus are demonised for celebrating Diwali with firecrackers or enjoying Holi, the festival of colours, by this leftist lobby, that has accused these festivals of being environment unfriendly. Ironically, this glib “pseudo secular lobby”, looks the other way, when entire forests are stripped naked of trees during Christmas, or when countless goats are butchered mercilessly during Eid.

Speaking of the hypocrisy of this “Award Wapasi Gang” that reared its ugly head in 2015 and has now done an encore in 2019, with this letter by the “intolerant 49”,this gang that is fast fading into oblivion, has tried making many failed comebacks. As recently as 2017, the proposed one-day token ban on a television channel, infamous for reported money laundering, airing live coverage and giving out strategically sensitive information of the Pathankot airbase attack, had evoked a hue and cry, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, calling the ban “shocking and unprecedented”. What is shocking is the Gandhi scion’s amnesic memory, given that between 2005 and 2013, during the Congress-led UPA’s reign, 21 channels were taken off air, on at least 28 occasions. Equally hypocritical is the reaction from media bodies, terming the BJP led NDA Government’s proposed action as a reminder of the infamous Emergency of 1975.

The likes of this particular television channel, dying remnants of leftist ideology and large sections of a defunct Indian National Congress that have never missed an opportunity to vilify the Modi Government, would do well to note, this is 2019 and not 1975, when Indira Gandhi passed the 38th Amendment which prohibited judicial review of the Emergency and the 39th Amendment which gave her, as Prime Minister, absolute power to ignore the courts. She used the two amendments with impunity to nullify the verdict of electoral malpractices against her, in a judgement of Justice, Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court. Amnesty International noted that at least 1,10,000 people were summarily jailed by Indira Gandhi under the draconian MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act), of which purportedly 70,000 were Sikhs. What’s more, MISA was placed under the 9th Schedule, giving it judicial immunity. Indira Gandhi thereby gifted herself a carte blanche to suspend civil and personal liberties, make a mockery of Article 19 of the Constitution, turning the then President into a puppet and allowing an estimated 11 million forced sterilisations, in the most gruesome display of barbarism.

What is laughable, therefore, is the leftist-liberal, pseudo-secular brigade’s selective outrage on issues. While copious tears were shed on Rohith Vemula and rightfully so,there was not even a teary pretence for two Dalit BJP karyakartas in West Bengal, namely Dhulal Kumar and Trilochan Mahato, who were founding hanging from trees in Purulia district, in 2018. The same lot that kept on and on about a thief called Tabrez Ansari who died of a cardiac attack,never once spoke about young Sachin Gopalan of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), who was hacked to death few years back, or the scores of RSS and Right-wing activists who have been killed in Opposition-ruled States like Kerala and more recently in Bengal, over the last few years, under an inept and corrupt government run by TMC leader Mamata Bannerjee.

Mamata, notorious for arresting Jadavpur university professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, in 2012,for merely a harmless spoof, has the audacity to act holier than thou and sing paeans about secularism, after getting a 17 year old teenager arrested for an innocuous Face Book post in 2017 and then turning a deaf ear to the ugly Basirhat riots that followed,where a helpless 65 year old Kartik Ghose was lynched to death with impunity,by radicalised islamist jihadis.

That Hindus in Nalhati village in Birbhum district of Bengal were not allowed to celebrate Durga Puja for years together by the Mamata led TMC regime, or that Hindus were forced to flee “en masse” from Raniganj in Asansol by ravaging islamist mobs in 2018, never quite made it to mainstream national headlines. Worse still, the likes of Aparna Sen,Kaushik Sen, Bolan Ganguly and others, part of the “gang of 49”, have been mute spectators and not spoken out even once against “hate crimes” in their own backyard, by jihadist elements against the Hindus of Bengal. What a shame that those whining about intolerance and calling ” Jai Shree Ram “, a provocative war cry, were blissfully and wilfully ignorant when 20 year old Shipra Ghosh was kidnapped, gangraped and murdered at Kamduni in Bengal in June 2013,with her body torn apart right till her navel, by nine men, including TMC workers, Amin Ali, Ansar Ali and Saiful Ali.

Chanting “Bharat Mata ki jai” is being fascist? Condemning Burhan Wani, a dreaded Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist, is being insensitive to the idea of “Kashmiriyat and Jamooriyat”? Hanging of Yakub Memon, one of the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attack that killed hundreds, is reportedly, a travesty of “Insaaniyat”? Asking Teesta Setalvad, who apparently used public money for private pleasures, is being vindictive? Continuing with AFSPA in disturbed areas, is being draconian? Using pellet guns on treacherous jihadis and their handlers, who pelt stones at our soldiers when the latter are in the midst of a fierce gun battle with terrorists, is being brutal? Doing surya namaskar in schools is being communal, but young girls getting raped in the close confines of a madrasa is not even worth condemnation? Standing up for instant triple talaq victims, is being anti-minorities and questioning Gurmehar Kaur’s dim-witted hypocrisy, is being intolerant?

Chanting “Jai Shree Ram” is bigotry, but when a 40,000 strong bloodthirsty jihadist mob vandalises the Azad Maidan at Mumbai, molesting woman constables in broad daylight in 2012, chanting “AllaHuAkbar”, it is perfectly acceptable? Encroaching on State property and reading “Namaaz” on roads is acceptable but festive revelry invoking “Bhole Naath” or Bhagwan Shivji, during “Shravan Melas” and “Kanwar Yatras”, are debauchery?Who says so? The leftist cabal that enjoys all the benefits of the Indian state, including an Indian passport and various freebies at the expense of the average Indian tax payer and yet,undermines every Indian institution by repeatedly lampooning everything Indian, says so.

Again, ban on cow slaughter is impingement of the freedom of our taste buds, but relishing pork is haraam? Deaths of Akhlaq and alleged cow smuggler Pehlu Khan are worthy of media attention, but gruesome murder of 24 year old Hitesh Mulchandani in Pune in July 2019, allegedly by Shahbaz Qureshi, Amin Firoze Khan and Arbaaz Shaikh, only because he protested against their daily routine of urinating right outside his grocery shop, is kosher? Chanting Hanuman Chalisa is incendiary but being conveniently mute when V.Ramalingam in Thirubhuvanam had his hands chopped off, only because he protested against forced conversions of Dalits in his village by Muslims, before being stabbed to death, reportedly, by Myden Ahmed Shali and Mohamed Quthoos, is not even worthy of outrage? Why are liberals progressive enough to outrage over reel life scenes of jauhar in the movie “Padmavat” or male chauvinism in “Kabir Singh”, but not progressive to call out the misogyny of serial offender and land grabber Azam Khan, who on the floor of the Parliament, passed a sexist comment against Rama Devi, the Chair of the house, after embarrassing an entire nation by commenting on Jaya Prada’s “khakhi underwear”.

Blaming “Devisthan” and “Hindustan” for the Kathua rape without any conclusive evidence is fine, but not even a meek squeak from the placard holding bollywood starlets and a jaded poet and his intolerant spouse, against the barbaric rapes of three year old Twinkle Sharma in Aligarh by Zahid Aslam, rape of a 7 year old in Jaipur by Sikander, a 9 year old girl in Delhi’s Bawana, by a 67 year old maulvi, Zakir Alam,rape of a 6 year old in Dwarka in Delhi by Mohammed Nanhe, of a 8 year old in Barabanki by Salim, rape of a 9 year old in Bihar by Saddam Ansari and of a 3 year old in Meerut, by Mohammad Shadaab? It is precisely this deafening silence by the leftist cabal, that has polarised the society, which poses a grave threat to India’s inherently inclusive Hindus.

Nothing brings out the hypocrisy in large sections of the media discourse and amongst the “fiberal seculararti”, more than their squeamish radio silence on the spate of “Love Jihad” and “Rape Jihad” incidents in the last few years, where Hindu girls have been lured into a fake marriage or forcibly converted or worse, savagely raped by radicalised islamists and dumped in the gutter, as was the case with aspiring model Manasi Dixit, who was hacked to death by Muzzamil Sayyed, her partner, in a gut wrenching case of hate crime in October 2018,in Mumbai. 19 year old Khushi Parihar from Nagpur who had even changed her name to Zara,was hacked to death by her live in partner Ashraf Shaikh, while the horrific case of Heena Talreja from Mirpur, who was raped and shot at gun point by her husband, Adnan Khan and his friend, in August 2017,only because she dared to question Adnan’s infidelity, are not stray or sporadic incidents of hate crimes by the radicalised minoritarian groups.

The sharp and manifold surge in such incidents where Hindus, especially Hindu girls have been systematically duped, targetted and then cruelly ravaged by islamists, is a telling sign of how the Hindu majority has not only been victimised without any provication, but more importantly, in a shameful display of selective amnesia and selective outrage, a large part of mainstream media has been hand in glove with these notorious minoritarian jihadist elements, in supporting a dangerously false narrative of Muslim victimhood. The truth is,it is not Muslims but Hindus,who have been brutalised; From a 22 year old Chandan Gupta who was killed by Salman and Saleem, for merely carrying out a “Tiranga Yatra” in “Mohalla Nawab” colony, a Muslim majority area, as part of Republic day celebrations in 2018,in Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh, to Bharat Yadav,a poor lassi vendor in Mathura, who was attacked by an armed mob of 15,led by Mohammad Hanif and Mohammad Shah Rukh, who mercilessly thrashed Bharat to death, in May 2019,only because he dared to ask them to pay for the lassis they had consumed.

The war of letters between the “intolerant gang of 49” and the “celebrated 62”,in the final analysis, is therefore, not one about freedom of speech and expression or, about law and order or, even about minority versus majority. It is not about Hindus versus Muslims and perhaps not about “Jai Shree Ram” either. It surely has nothing to do with healthy dissent, by any measure. The crux of the issue is simply and unequivocally about the rapidly dwindling fortunes of an illiberal pseudo secular mafia that has had its bluff called out, fair and square. This leftist bunch of “Urban Naxals”, a coinage made popular by noted film maker Vivek Agnihotri, who has fearlessly punctured many a lie, of the “JNU Tukde Tukde Mafia” and taken them head on, are not agents of change but mere opportunists who wish to overthrow a duly elected popular government and, destabilise democratic institutions by creating a deviously biased false narrative against the ruling Narendra Modi led government. They have realised their hypocrisy barely counts in the “New India” being shaped by PM Modi, that is not xenophobic, is aspirational and, will not succumb to bullying by intellectual pygmies and entitled dynasts, who do not know the difference between nationalism and separatism, dissent and disintegration.

Leftists and radicalised jihadists from radical outfits like the All India Students Association (AISA),need to be told that the honest Indian tax-payer is not in the mood anymore to pay for the subsidies of these hooligans, masquerading as student activists. What a travesty indeed, that the “Lutyenised Khan Market” gang, that is ready to tarnish India, Hindus and ‘Jai Shree Ram’ with malicious columns in international publications about imaginary violence, maintained a stoic silence, despite the Pune police filing a 5000 page chargesheet exposing the nefarious links between “journalist” Gautam Navlakha, Surendra Gadling, Sudha Bhardwaj, Rona Wilson and the deadly, seditious, Maoists. Navlakha is also said to be closely associated with terror outfit, “Hizbul Mujahideen” and, in touch with separatists like Syed Shah Geelani and Shakil Bakshi, since 2011.

The “Navlakha-Hizbul” terror link, brings out the scathingly shameful hypocrisy of the “Award Wapasi” and intolerance brigades, like none other. Right from historian Romila Thapar, to economist, Prabhat Patnaik, professor Satish Deshpande and, lawyer Vrinda Grover, to human rights activist, Maja Daruwala, who publicly supported Navlakha in a press conference in 2018,even in the face of incriminating evidence against him, are conspicuous by their silence today and have no remorse in reportedly, doubling up as puny apologists for someone, charge-sheeted under UAPA and trying to wage a war against the Indian State !

Failed movie makers like Anurag Kashyap who have an opinion on everything under the sun and, “Radia-ised” journalists who justify terror attacks by radicalised islamists, by giving convoluted arguments that only those who are illiterate or unemployed, take to arms,have completely missed the woods for the trees, yet again. This was evident from the heinous terror attack bid to poison 40000 devotees at 400 year old Mumbreshwar temple, by a Zakir Naik and ISI inspired, educated 32 year old, Jaman Nawab, working as a pharmacist in Mumbai, with India’s richest civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This is a bid to poison, elicited radio silence from the usual hyperventilating liberal brigade for reasons, best known to them. Again, this gang of “49”, that was frothing with rage, at “Jai Shree Ram” chants by Hindus, lost its tongue when professor Subrata Chatterjee was thrashed mercilessly by TMC goons, in Hoogly sometime back, for refusing to say, “Mamata Banerjee Zindabad”.

The “fiberal secularati” that pontificated sanctimoniously about how SP of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Kumar Pandey, had no business massaging the foot of a tired “kaanwariya”, while in uniform, did not once condemn the rampant paedophilia or the barbaric rapes of nuns in Kerala, by pastors and Christian priests, under the guise of pristine white robes!What a pity that those Hinduphobes who wrongfully talk “ad nauseaum” about weaponisation of “Jai Shree Ram”, were blissfully quiet when a rabid Muslim lawyer and member of the AIMIM, openly gave a war cry for an “Islamic militia”, shamefully enough, from inside a mosque, by asking his Muslim brethren to train in arms and learn how to acquire gun licenses.

Let the “eminently intolerable 49”, therefore be reminded that, it is not “Jai Shree Ram”, that they need to fear. If anything, let them call out the rabid bigotry of Hinduphobic evangelists like Bishop, Ezra Sargunam from Tamil Nadu, a strident DMK supporter among other things, whose hate speech in June 2019,goes thus— “There is nothing called as a Hindu Religion, Punch them (Hindus) in their face couple of times, make them bleed and help them understand the truth” .

The Janus faced hypocrisy of pseudo secular, left-liberal, anti-Modi propagandists and “professional pessimists”, who are desperately trying to clutch at any fig leaf or straw in the wind, that comes their way by design or accident, know it is end game for them, in the war of narratives, because truth has a way of finding its own way, unhinged and unfettered. For long, this Lutyenised cabal has tried mocking nationalists as part of a “tilak wearing saffron fringe”, that is Islamophobic. The truth however is, Hindus who are inherently secular, are no longer apologetic of “Ram Lalla, Tilak, Mangalsutra, Bindi or Bhagwa”. And yes, Hindus, Hinduism and Hindutva, are in essence, interchangeable, as they are eventually about religion, traditions, culture, divinity, “aastha” and so much more.

And yes,on that note—– “Jai Shree Ram” !!!

Ms Sanju Verma is an Economist & Chief Spokesperson for BJP Mumbai.