Shivers

7th April 2009, Boston, USA

Quite distant from the horrors spatially and chronologically, a quote often read before but now seen carved in stone. If I remembered correctly, it was Ma who brought it up first in one of her history lessons. In the bleak pre-spring of Massachusetts, the quote found expression next to a memorial shaped like stacks, chimney stacks. Involuntary shivers. Both at what had happened and at the fact that we never learnt.

Bigotry 101 - Mad Dogs and Demons

Do note and be warned. This is how the game is played.

The post below was originally shared by quite a few of my Facebook friends so I couldn’t resist discussing how perfectly the post set about achieving its ‘objectives’. The thought bubble and the crude red annotations on an already very crude post is my addition.

Let’s start by accepting that violence is simply unacceptable and that mob ‘justice’ is no justice at all. The leering happy Muslim faces that you would see on these clips are inevitable in a mob situation where the nastiest instincts of humanity are revealed. That’s the reason why boring words like rule of law, due process and human rights matter – they are exactly what differentiate a civilized nation from the mob.

If you still think revenge for their ‘fellow’ murdered Hindus on Sabarmati Express was the agenda of the mobs in the riots post Godhra 2002, you are severely mistaken. It was rape, murder and petty theft from brand showrooms. There was no ‘justice’ delivered in ‘the lesson taught’ to the nearest available absolutely unrelated Muslim and indeed no equal and opposite reaction. It was fulfillment of personal agendas and cashing-in of political dividends. Every act of mob violence always is (including the one above) and that is why mob violence is, by its very nature, wrong.

This picture, nonetheless, is the perfect example of how the merchants of mayhem work your mind. 

1. Tricking you into thinking of all of ‘them’ as ‘one’. They want you to sweat in terror at the ‘fact’ that your Muslim colleague or classmate is no different from the ISIS beheader you saw on ShankhNaad. Don’t you need protection from their madness? Who will you turn to [Wink wink]? Note the ‘30%’ smoothly slipped in there… as if all of Bengal’s Muslim population can be seen on this clip - Indian/Bangladeshi/who cares as long as it is a ‘violent Muslim’ who fits the narrative. “Look at what THEY are doing at 30%. Imagine them in majority… shiver me timbers!”, they squeak.

2. They also want to remind you that it is ‘these’ people who have hounded minorities in their Muslim majority homelands, quietly, surreptitiously pushing the same fake message that they DON’T BELONG HERE. Never mind the fact that the people seen here had zero involvement in the atrocities perpetrated in Muslim majority countries. Once more, it’s the same “All Muslims are the same [Read terrifying]. It’s just their NATURE” narrative. Though they’ll shout from the rooftops “Why are Indian Muslims protesting CAB?”, they’ll also whisper “You see? These people are naturally violent, ALL OF THEM. Isn’t the law that is flagrantly discriminatory against THEIR religion a masterstroke? [Wink wink]”

At this point of time, the reader may be wondering as to why speak only about the Hindu merchants of mayhem and not the others?

It’s because all of these ideas of these merchants of mayhem are that fucking unoriginal. 

Selecting bits of incendiary information, encouraging blanket hatred against the ‘other’ – that is the bread and butter of every carbon copy Islamic terror outfit (Kafirs must die on earth so that I can live a Kafir lifestyle in heaven), white supremacist (we started everything so enough of this sharing with these ungrateful inferior non-whites) and Maoists (them rich people must be executed and their wealth distributed). 

Not only is such stupidity unproductive and dangerous, it rapidly comes to grief with maximum trauma and negative benefits. If history (not the WhatsApp edition) is a long bus trip, religious fundamentalism, white supremacy, Maoism are the co-passengers from hell – too much baggage, full of ignorant opinion and filled with an uncontrollable urge to be the bus driver.

But… but… but then why don’t we hear voices from the other side criticizing their own? 

To that question, this answer is as fucking original as it gets… this being my very raw personal experience.

It was nearly the last day of my long tenure in the USA when I was called a terrorist. Right to my face. Aloud and in the middle of a crowd. By someone who couldn’t possibly have been more than 6 years old. Even as the kid’s smug white parents looked on, ‘pride’ shining in their eyes. In the heart of New York City, a surge of rage rose taller than the Empire State Building within me and almost as rapidly subsided. 

I could see in that microsecond what made the kid think that way – brown guy, reasonably dishevelled from walking around that great city for the umpteenth time, holding camera in hand and ‘scouting’ for locations to bomb. All the ticks, all the filters that the kid’s monumentally stupid, hate-filled environment had trained him to pick were fulfilled. I was, as Stephen Colbert put it, “Mus-lish” enough.

I really felt no need to explain that everything he had known about brown people was wrong. That there were a lot of brown people who were not involved in bringing down the World Trade Centre, including Muslims and non-Muslims like me. That if he talked to us, he wouldn’t find us that very different from ‘his’ people, whatever that allegiance might be. 

Most importantly, I felt (for a very brief while) how every Muslim around the world must feel when asked to take responsibility for ISIS or about why he ‘didn’t protest the atrocities’ of his ‘co-religionists’. I realized the load that someone else’s bigotry and ignorance put on my sanity. I didn’t owe any explanation to anyone and I couldn’t be responsible for what someone ‘thought’ I was, where I came from, or what my ‘intentions’ were. If I am the demon from someone’s nightmare just by existing, the fault is definitely not mine.

But… but… but my bigotry is well researched and personally experienced, the reader may claim. Why would a community be hated ‘around the world’ if there weren’t cause for it?

The answer to that, I am afraid, is once again fucking unoriginal and I must fall back on the Internet proven Godwin’s Law. Looking beyond WhatsApp screenshots for history might be critical to the argument.

There once was a time (and still is, in the pockets where Nazis are heroes) when in countries ‘around the world’, the root cause of all evil was a Jew. They were ‘everywhere’… taking over, destroying ‘us’, proliferating ‘theirs’. It took a Hitler supported by his trial-less murder of 10 million non-combatants, a World War and two atomic bombs to realize that there was a slight problem with that sweeping generalization. The problem was that the assumption was overwhelmingly and gut-wrenchingly wrong. Evil. Unacceptable.

The markers of extremist movements are all the same. 

1. We were the best before ‘they’ came in and perfect as we are, we do not need to absorb anything from anyone else (don’t you dare reveal that what we have is a wonderful composite of ALL the cultures that call our country home).

2. We had everything before everyone else (and even if we didn’t, we’ll shame our wise ancients by treating our myths as science and history, completely ignoring the invaluable philosophy embedded in them). 

3. We are the nice guys who are being taken advantage of. Haven’t we been appeasing ‘them’? ‘They’ are so lucky to be here instead of ‘there’ (hence we must pro-actively ‘unite’ to get us our historical dues).

4. It takes a Great Leader to restore a Great Nation by his sheer unquestionable genius (if you disagree like all those ‘fake’ intellectuals who have been letting us down, there’s always a neighbouring country we could send you to). Giant statues, falsified history, inappropriate appropriation of national heroes and the all-important Facebook soldiers, all vie for second position in that great mission of national upliftment.

5. It doesn’t matter if our country is going through an economic, social and moral crisis, what’s important is national pride based on hatred of the ‘other’ and putting ‘them’ in their place (because filling stomachs is not as easy as ripping them open).

6. Last and most important, ‘they’ are hardly human, not worth our thought and attention, evil reproductory robots who are hell-bent on finishing us. We tried so hard to reach across the aisle but look at what we got. We must get rid of ‘them’ for our survival.

You get the drift. The end results of all such movements, likewise, sooner rather than later rain faeces on their collectively angry faces and on much of the landscape around.

Yet the ease offered by these simplistic narratives must be acknowledged. There are terrible things in the world – poverty, hunger, want. What better than a readymade bogeyman to blame it on and a mob mission to lynch him with! It frees the individual from the pain of thinking complicated things through and though a mental slave, imagine himself to be a fighter of ‘evil’ in his inner life. He has no clue of how ugly the reality that he is fostering is.

For these are people who claim that they are all for the ‘right’ type of Muslim but even a lifelong student and doctorate of Sanskrit is unsuitable to respect as a teacher just because his name is Feroze Khan. Yes, they are those who think that candle light protests are more dangerous for the structure of the country than a terrorism under trial being appointed to the nation’s defence committee. 

I can only hope that they will realize in time that bringing in the slavering mad dogs from the margins into the central hall doesn’t make them any less mad, it makes them more so.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/12/bigotry-101-mad-dogs-and-demons.html]

Fundamentally Strange

If you haven’t heard Snap Judgement yet, you probably should. 

This public radio show/podcast with all manner of interesting stories being narrated in the most addictive of fashions is great company, especially on days when you have to get down to boringly necessary tasks like cleaning up your room or re-organizing your book collection. Connect that Bluetooth speaker and listen on.

A particular story, A Wives’ Tale, left an impact stronger than most, even among those choice selections. An exploration of how strange and how strong the world of fundamentalist religion is, it offers up a new set of heroes for whom even a minor act of ‘dressing up’/’dolling up’, depending on which side of the fundamentalist divide you are on, becomes a major rebellion. At the centre of it is a man and his five wives, members of a polygamist religious organization in Utah, USA and their definition of when time honoured tradition transitions into rigid control.

The story seemed remarkable to me in two ways. One is the ‘normal’ that the five wives take for granted before remarkably tearing themselves out of that comfort of familiarity and family, the only things they had known in their lives thus far, to take a very minor but for them life-altering step. The second, much more morally ambiguous, is how to look at the male protagonist of the story – as a liberator to which he can make a partial claim or as a patriarchy perpetuator who, after all, is still a polygamist in 2019 overseeing his ‘flock’ of five wives and twenty-five children.

Like any good story, it left me thinking long after the credits music had faded away.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/05/fundamentally-strange.html]

"Who needs intellectuals?" - Kerala Edition

Loving this post shared by a *neutral* friend on why Kerala is stupid. I am always proud to be a liberal. Then there are other times when I am even more proud to be so.

For context (which may be useful at a later time), this is about the state of Kerala in southern India resoundingly rejecting the message of religious discord spread by a certain political party by giving them a grand total of zero seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha 2019 elections. Naturally, some *neutral* egos were bruised and rather lame attempts to make fun of a progressive, secular and intellectually aware state are in full swing.

The very first line by a *neutral* is dissing a couple of South Indian languages, which are thousands of years old with millions of native speakers each and as Indian (if not more) than Hindi. "They don't even speak Hindi" seems to be the mood. No secret then about which side of the liberal-conservative divide these *neutrals* fall. "OK leave it" they say as they graciously overlook that unforgivable 'fault'.

It's time to now look at their math skills. In their liberal nailing calculations, since total population is XYZ, naturally all of them voted... never mind the concept of voter turnout percentage and the fact that a significant number of them are ineligible to vote because they are below 18 years of age. These are 'intellectual' concepts of no importance.

Then, it gets even more brilliant as they calculate the number of votes the *neutral* party received. Since they won 64 out of the 80 seats in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, it's a simple multiplication. Never mind the 'intellectual' concept that even within each constituency, not every vote goes to a winning candidate. Besides, the concept of an individual opinion is so anti-India and scary. How dare anyone not vote for their *neutrality*?

They seal their bulletproof argument with the case of 'these intellectuals' electing a candidate, a lunkhead of the highest order in his own right, who had lost to a *star* candidate of the *neutral* party in the second seat he was contesting. This *star* who first lied about being a Yale graduate, later promoted herself to an undergraduate degree and then finally revealed that she had studied only till grade 12, (incredible but true) served as Education Minister of the world's largest democracy, a period which she spent angrily questioning IITs and JNU, India's most premier educational institutions, for their lack of standards. Obviously, her victory is clearly indicative of 'actual' intellectuals somehow.

Also, do note in the midst of their *strong* arguments, how they sneak in a convenient half-truth about Kerala having the highest crime rate in India. Sure, Kerala has recently seen a spurt of political violence due to the rise of a certain *neutral* party which will later milk it for electoral purposes through their divisive but tremendously successful *majority is in danger* strategy. But on the list of violent crimes per capita for states, Kerala - with its high Human Development Index - has still consistently ranked near the bottom out of the 30 states in India while guess which state always hovers nears the top of that list? Hint: It's that state that the *neutral* party is so proud of winning and wants to set as a model in the face of happy, wise Kerala. Truth is optional, as it always is for any side terrified of logical opinions.

All I can say is: Kerala, stay your way. If these arguments against you are any proof, we sure need your intellectuals. As far sensible people in both Uttar Pradesh and Kerala and the rest of India know, whatever this joke of a diss was trying to be, it is not exactly a strong case for the *neutral* kind of 'literacy'.

*---* = Self-proclaimed

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/05/who-needs-intellectuals.html]

Not My Fault

Of late, the fans of a certain political ideology have been insisting that my vote will be ‘wasted’ kyunki “Aayega toh…” Something compels them to come looking for me and post on my FB wall, some talking to me for the first time almost 11 years after college, specifically to tell me that “YOU will lose, OUR guy will win”. Silent Likes on his kinda-funny-but-still-out-of-the-blue aggression indicate that a few more share his opinion. They are the quiet ones, ashamed of expressing their inner feelings but put 3 of them together and they graduate directly to mob frenzy. They want to tell me, shout me down, that I, the sickular, pseudo-liberal, West Bangladeshi will lose and their nation (because obviously secularism = foreign concept imposed on Indians, so I can’t be one) powered by their warped version of religion, long suppressed, shall reduce me to ashes. Also, hate to inform them that I am not running for any office.

I laugh at these children of summer and their naivete. They do not realize that elections work a little differently from Indian Idol. The vote is not always about the most razzle-dazzle and membership on a ‘winning’ team. Sometimes it is a judgement for promises not fulfilled and an indictment for situations unravelling in an atmosphere of unprecedented hatred. Individual opinion scares them, even their own. An independent National Green Tribunal, Reserve Bank of India, Supreme Court, Election Commission etc? Why on earth would any ‘patriot’ need such separate (read inefficient) and free-thinking (read deeply dangerous) power centres? They like to be guided, goose-stepping in alignment with their identified superhero even if for the mildest unbiased eye, he’s just another credit-stealing, buck-passing, self-promoting bag of political hot air. It’s impossible for them to process that those in power can be questioned and should be. Because they are blindly in love with a very tattered and deeply compromised image, they assume that power must be obeyed and worshipped. Since they cannot see any faults in their candidate, others MUST accept His flawlessness too.

I fear I might have already triggered a few of them into commenting below but here are a few other key identifying criteria. JNU students and NDTV are their ‘core’ national issues, not poverty and inequality. The massive environmental crisis that looms ahead due to water, land and air being compromised for business ‘utility’ is acceptable in the race for superpower-dom, except for a few anti-nationals who worry about children being reduced to wearing facemasks to school, their survival dependent on Kent RO water. While they claim to dream of an undivided India, they can’t even bear to look at the people of a particular religion without whispering ISIS and running about, dizzy with panic. Such brotherly feelings they foster, for a massive group of people who first moved to India in 632 AD and subsequently chose India over Pakistan as their home in 1947, never mind those that moved across. Talking about patriarchy and caste crime is a tremendously touchy issue with them. You see, we never had those problems in our golden perfect period until them ‘foreigners’ ruined it. These are just anti-majority foreign constructs being forced down Indian throats. Someone in WhatsApp authority told them so… hence this must be true.

It is these self-proclaimed "progressive minded patriots" who are OK with Sadhvi Pragya and Yogi Adityanath as candidates but would have pooped their pants if a single Opposition candidate used "Allahu Akbar" in their campaigning. "Jai Shri Ram" nasties are however OK? They want uniform civil code but beef - oh, that's a no-no? They are OK with a PM who lies through his teeth in public speeches and promotional interviews (Ganesh-was-plastic-surgery, black-money-no-digitization-no-wait-tax-payer-base-no-no-no-something-else-tomorrow, radar, digicam, internet, DU topper) and walks around claiming to be non-corrupt while canoodling with the shadiest of industrialists. The present government has diluted the Right to Information Act (chillingly, once the petitioner is dead, the RTI automatically closes), introduced the perfect route to industrial scale political corruption through the anonymous political bonds scheme and sanitized its past sins by exempting from scrutiny, all the funds received from abroad going back to 1976. Still, the faithful insist that the Special One is pure as snow.

Even if someone does win on May 23rd, do remember that Rajiv Gandhi won 400+ after the horrific massacre of Sikhs in 1984. Democracy has its ups and downs. The people’s choice is not always the right one. But irrespective of how perfect you think your candidate is (Harking back to a time when idiots, like a particular grade of supporters active today, had said Indira = India, India = Indira), democracy has its own schemes to make the arrogant fall, sooner rather than later. Most of the established parties have already been through that cycle. Some recent regional entrants, in this very election, will feel the same or in the 2021 Assembly polls. I will be watching and smiling.

Oh and sorry, I will always make my opinion heard. I have cast my vote and will continue to, circumstances permitting. I think it matters. I think I matter. It’s not exactly my fault if your bull-shit sensor is so deeply dysfunctional and your independent opinion had gone AWOL.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/05/not-my-fault.html]

"Being Hindu in Borkhaland"

***Please don't go by the title. Read a little further.***

The Bengali text in the image above loosely translates to "Don't know if north Bengal will become Gorkhaland but the remaining portion is on its way to becoming Borkhaland." Borkha? This is Bengal. Our tendency to 'O'lter everything makes even a burqa a borkha.

This WhatsApp forward (the Bengali portion that is, the English additions are mine) is the in-thing with the Hindu Muslim riots currently engulfing the Bangladesh bordering areas of Basirhat and Baduria of West Bengal. As per this forward, the Hindu community in West Bengal is supposedly being besieged by radical Muslims and will soon turn into a slave Caliphate.

I will come to my opinion on this soon but a couple of clarifications are in order before I begin. 

The intention of this post is NOT to underplay the real terror that the Hindus affected by the riots must be feeling. When there is a Muslim mob running through your streets, the primary sentiment is NOT "Muslims are also peaceful people just like us". But the same terror holds true for a Muslim family living in a majority Hindu neighbourhood at the time of riots. This is the primary reason why riots are a bad idea. It makes normal people fear each other and kill each other under the understanding that if you don't kill "them", "they" will kill you.

The intention of this post is also NOT to ignore the fact that it is downright evil that there can be such large scale violence on the basis of a Facebook post by a 11th grade student. No matter how precious your Book or your Prophet or your Holy Land is, you have to put up with people who think otherwise. Call them stupid, call them instigators, call them whatever but you have no right to resort to physical harm as a solution. I personally think even arresting someone for a Facebook post is ridiculous. Why should there be an arrest? If he is making a public proclamation of his idiocy, give him the freedom to do so. Let him be publicly idiotic and you continue on your ways.

Coming then to the intention of this post. The intention of this post is to discuss how right wing shitheads are using this opportunity to create further divisions. Also, why West Bengal is not exactly the India hating, Islam worshipping, Hindu enslaving land that the Internet Hindus will have you believe.

We had a fridge technician visit our house a day after the riots. He lives in Bongaon, the last railway stop on the Bangladesh border and the train he takes everyday crosses the riot affected areas. His story to a fellow Hindu (namely me), in between working on the fridge, went like this "... These guys (for some reason he is afraid to use the word Muslims) started protesting after a boy posted content criticizing a terrorist leader... yesterday a mob of 2 lakh people had formed, today they have a mob of 10 lakh people... look, today these guys have blocked the railway routes as well, how will I reach home safely... this is an ideal time for terrorists to sneak into our borders... this was due to happen, successive governments have long appeased them..." and so on.

Let's analyze the key elements of his story really quickly.

1. The "terrorism" element = Complete lie. The problem post was about so-called offence to a religious site, still no justification for violence but a completely different thing to supporting terrorist leaders. But it all fits well in the poisoned minds of the Internet Hindu, the logic goes that Muslim = Terrorist. They have no need to question or doubt. Anything bad about Muslim mobs must be true. Why 10 lakh, even 1 crore Muslims might have been part of the mob? When faking information, why not dream big?

2. The "blocked the railway routes" element = Actually... it was the BJP which blocked the rail routes the next day. Not that it mattered to Mr. Muslims-be-so-evil. For him, any and all problems in his life and his country's future (and past) can be traced to Muslims.

3. The "appeasement" element = Come on now, you sickular anti-national, admit that this is true. I read it on Quora all the time. The question would be on the lines of why is West Bengal so backward and the most upvoted answer would summarize as because West Bengal was not Internet Hindu enough. Ladies and gentlemen, let me stress and restress and re-restress that this is the most fucked up, non sequitur, baseless reason that could ever be given.

West Bengal had 99 problems but religious strife wasn't one of them. Until now.

We've had our bloody share of it in the past though. Hindu Muslim riots were an essential part of the landscape until gradually it dawned on us that this was a ridiculous thing to do. The rise of the irreligious Left had a little to do with it for sure and for some strange reason, Bengalis saw reason in not killing each other over outdated documentation. 

Busy with our addas and biryani aloos, we couldn't make sense of all this hoo-ha over mandirs and masjids. Our bad. Because the cauldron was brewing. The Left with its worker unions stagnated industry and money left West Bengal like a reverse tsunami towards the western states. Intellectual debates are central to our existence but keeping jobs here wouldn't have hurt as well. 

So when the time came for the blame game, secularism and education found themselves caught up in the accusations thrown at corruption and inefficiency. Supposed anti-nationalism spread like a cancer through students of exemplary universities like Jadavpur and Presidency. Outright lies like the "aarti at Kalighat Temple is banned by Mamata Begum" began to circulate on social media. Hmm... how mysterious? Who could be behind such activities? So so so difficult to guess!

Before secularism could react, there were sword rallies on Ram Navami and non native Hindu festivals being borrowed by the dozens. Hindu pride is being restored, we were told. That we were not ashamed of being Hindu in the first place (we were proud Hindus even before we needed to display swag with brandishing swords riding motorcycles) is not something easily understood by the Internet Hindus. 

That to bring back industry and jobs and growth to our state, "Mandir wahin banayengey" is completely unrelated and possibly detrimental to that cause. Industry wahin banayengey (but environment kaa bhi dhyaan rakhnaa please) is more like it but mandir is first you see, it is the "will of the people". 

Education and planning could take a hike. Primary to development was sentiment, Hindu sentiment to be precise. In the land of exemplary Hindu Muslim cross-cultural bonding, the land of Lalan Fakir and baul sangeet and Swami Vivekanand and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, after long trials & repeated failures had finally established their base - the cow-Nazis.

In a completely unrelated coincidence (sarcasm fully intended 1), in the political vacuum created by a toothless and completely clueless Left, there came the rise in West Bengal of a party named the Bharatiya Janta Party.

It is hard to support a Chief Minister who would rather hold a press conference about how the Governor of our state was rude to her than focus on the obviously worsening situation. It is equally hard to favour a Governor who picked up the phone to scold her only after meeting representatives of well established neutral peaceful (sarcasm fully intended 2) organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

That said, is hardline Islam and pockets of their dominance a problem? Most definitely. They are not nice people, unscientific, evil and even 'un'nicer they are to non Muslims. These people are an absolute threat to the nation and yes, some of them have political patronage from TMC. Is the area I live in, a heavily Muslim area, filled with these angry ISIS types? Nope. The guy who sells me my groceries has a huge ass Islamic beard on his face and actually smiles at me as if I give him everyday business. Actually I do... but then I think he doesn't hate me for being Hindu either. Oh dear me and my delusions, when will I see, what these Muslims be? The Internet Hindus insist that I club all Muslims into one giant we'll-kill-or-convert-you-all ball.

Hard for me then, to make you, you the reader, realize the point of this post. I'll try nonetheless.

PLEASE DON'T FALL FOR THAT SHIT. IT'S JUST NOT TRUE. 

Talk to your nearest Bengali. Why does he hate Hindus and India? OMG, he just said he doesn't. Really, how can this be? Talk to your nearest Bengali Hindu friend. Ask him how he feels about being a slave to Islamist forces and being forced to recite the kalma 101 times a day. Look at his laughing face. 

Stop with the fear mongering and keep the peace. Come to Bengal and help us become great again. But please leave your religion at the door. We have enough problems already. I promise you that at least the food will be good. And no, despite everything that I just said, I am not sharing my biryani aloo with you. It's mine... alllll mine.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/07/being-hindu-in-borkhaland.html]

Sickular Sanatani I

For I am a proud Hindu... but not of these idiots.

Apples and oranges... ever heard of that one?

Think for a little bit before meming.

Exhibit A: WRT the Yulin Dog Meat festival. Terrible. I love dogs and abhor the idea of eating one. But some people don't. Yet the Chinese government hasn't quoted ancient scriptures to shut down this festival and no Chinese High Court Judge has requested that the punishment for killing a dog be the same as that for killing a man. So... even though I don't like it at all, I won't go around beating up or killing people for it either.

Exhibit B: WRT Jallikattu. Cruel. Because in the name of tradition, torturing an animal for no apparent reason is wrong. It might even be kinder to actually eat the animal than to put it through this kind of needless needling.

Exhibit C: WRT "Mother". Staple food for low caste Hindus, Muslims and Christians for centuries. Food on the table for many poor families. Shut down only because a certain section of our Hindu society doesn't approve of anyone else eating it! How? Why? Who are you to tell me what I should be eating? Hence the protests.

Get it? Oh, but wait. To understand you must put a little thought into why A & B are completely different from C and why there is no hypocrisy involved here. Unfortunately, thinking is such a liberal thing to do.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/06/sickular-sanatani-i.html?m=1]