He gave Indians a motto Bharat jodo – knit India. He died a few months ago. His message will live for ever.
There are three other Maharashtrians: Bal Thackeray, his son Uddhav and his nephew Raj. They have spent their lives in preaching hate against non-Maharashtrians who live in Maharashtra and compelled many thousands to flee, from the State. Their motto could be Bharat todo — split India. They are also Indians. I hope their message will die long before they do.

There was a Gujarati named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He spent his life in teaching Indians that they were one people. He went out of his way to reassure Muslims who suffered from a sense of alienation that they had nothing to fear from the Hindus: both Hindus and Muslims were sons of Mother India. The man who murdered Gandhi was also an Indian.

There is another Gujarati named Narendra Modi who has been a successful Chief Minister of Gujarat. He does not share Gandhi’s views about Muslims and feels that they have been too uppish in recent times and should be shown their place. So there were anti-Muslim riots in which thousands of innocent Muslims were killed and many thousands fled from Gujarat, those who stayed on live in fear of their lives.

There is an Indian from Indore (Madhya Pradesh), named M Fida Hussain. He is India’s greatest living painters. But he is not living in India where he wants, to but in Dubai because some of his countrymen have filed criminal cases against him on grounds that his paintings offend their religious susceptibilities and have warrants of arrest issued against him. 

The latest instance of how Indians can inflict torture on fellow Indians is the attack by hoodlums of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students branch of the BJP. They strode into the office of a Delhi University professor, roughed him up and broke some furniture. The pretext was that the post graduate curriculum of history included reading of A K Ramanujan’s references to different versions of the Ramayana.

They found words they construed derogatory of Shri Rama. The matter could have been discussed and doubts cleared, but they chose to settle matters by fisticuffs. For good measure they dragged in the name of Upinder Kaur, Professor of History and the Prime Minister’s daughter. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the matter. It was an act of downright dishonesty, but none of the leaders of the BJP, neither L K Advani, nor Rajnath Singh nor V K Malhotra said a word of condemnation of the dastardly act of vandalism. Is this Bharat jodo or Bharat todo?

The Great Bazar
More than a lakh of rupees for every run he scores
Dhoni has been sold for six crores,
For every ball he bowls, young Ishant Sharma too
Will get a lakh or more,
So why should not every street turn into a pitch
And urchins score boundaries by breaking our windows and door?
Why should they pour on books of drab Chemistry
Study dull Mathematics, rotten history
Rather than concentrate on silly mid-on!
And why should they play football or hockey?
And why the youngsters only
Why not I too flow with the tide
And become a batsman of the off side?
As the grand auction opens a floodgate
Even though retired already, it is not too late;
Come what may, I must keep fit and stout
And start hitting right and left before I am out.
(Courtesy: Kuldip Salii, Delhi)
A prayer
The following verse based on Hans Anderson’s fairy tale character Thumbelina — size of a thumb was scribbled on a card by the novelist-poet Tabish Khair when he paid me a visit in Delhi. He is now living in Anderson’s country Denmark where he teaches English in Aarhus University:
Grant me a little child
I can hide
When the Mullahs come home to pray,
When planes are birds of prey
Someone, smaller than my thumb
I can put in my pocket
And run.