BlogMas 2019 Day Seventeen - Patriarchal Item Number

Did you enjoy watching the movie Rang De Basanti?

Or Sarfarosh?

How was Raazi? And, Uri?

And, Mangal Pandey? Bhagat Singh? Roja? Bombay? 16 December?

Remember all of them?

Any similarity that strikes between all of them?

They are movies based wholly, or loosely on riots, protests, and revolutions that have already happened in our country. Give it a couple of years, and you'll have 16 December 2.0, outlining everything that has happened. And, again, people will walk out of theatres feeling proud to be Indian, filmmakers earning hundreds of crores, but not utilising any of it to aid the people of the country who they keep portraying in the movies - because really the characters need to have a spine, and show some conviction, which the actors lack.

That movie will also have an item number to keep the patriarchy alive.

They'll show the villainous politician having a change of heart in the end for an expected Bollywood Happy Ending, because people need hope and the belief that there's good in everyone.

Will you cheer then? Give such movies awards? Remember the ones who're in peril right now?

"In me reside the shlokas of Bhagvad Gita,

As much the editorials of an Urdu newspaper,

Hallowed is the month of Ramadan to me,

As is washing my sins away at the Holy Ganges,

The Temple's threshold is mine,

The Mosque's minaret is mine,

The Gurudwara's hall is mine,

The Church's pews are mine."

-Hindustani Musalmaan, Hussain Haidari

I've been coming across a lot of people who actually believe that the bill will not harm Indian citizens. Or, that the ambiguous classification of castes from only three Islamic states is justified - and not Lankan Hindus? Bhutanese Buddhists?

The bill enables NRC. NRC asks you to prove your ancestry......what? Now, I'm not sure how, that anyone in this country knows a foolproof way to prove their ancestry. My great grandfather came from Lahore to Bombay during partition. There are no papers. There are no papers of probably even my grandparents being born during that time - and my grandmother was actually born in 1947. The issue is the persistent emphasis on which religions will be accepted as citizens, under the act. By not mentioning the others, you are indirectly throwing them under the bus.

Again.

India is secular. India is a democracy. Religions should never be an underlining factor for any kind of categorisation.

People who'll be tabulated as immigrants in the event they're unable to produce documents about their ancestry will be granted citizenship through naturalization. The deliberate insistence that Muslims will not be harmed is only a masked indication of how false a promise it is.

The sheer lunacy is the de facto reasoning which is being thrown around as a compensation for excluding Muslims from the list of minority religions who're to be granted citizenship - the sheer minor percentage of Hindus, and other religions in the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. The three countries identify as Islamic states. They are not secular. They are under no liability to provide home in their country to immigrants, and refugees, barring the numbers they have to adhere to as per the UN's Refugee Protection Rules.

And, lastly. This is not a tit-for-tat!

It. Does. Not. Matter. How. Many. Hindus. Were. Housed. In. The. Islamic. States. Period.

It is in no way deterrent for how our country treats the people that enter it, seeking refuge. And, anyone who'd like to contest this fact with me, comment down below, and there's a plethora of education for you that you ought to pay attention to.

Moreover, the Hindus who're thinking they're safe, you will be next because this government will keep testing you. Today it is Muslims. Tomorrow, it will be about your Hindu castes, and Dalits, and Tam-Brahms, and Konkanastha Brahmins, and it'll forever go on. As for everyone's argument about the Muslims who sought refuge in India, they did because of persecution in their own country. They too were routinely harassed about how Muslim they are. That is the inherent result of a religion-majority state.

More than that, imagine the state that will be of women. Just, imagine. There a thousand things regarding the shutdown of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority state in the country, the threat to indigenous people in Assam, the masked use of hostels as detention camps already in Assam, the atrocities of the police on its people that I'm not even dipping into. Without the mention of all of it, it's bad enough as is. The fact that this bill has been standing in Parliament since four years, within good reason. If this isn't racism, discrimination, fascism, I don't know what is.

And, anywhere if there's a person working in the police force reading this, if you're Muslim, I'm sorry on behalf of all of my brethren if things are being made difficult for you. If you're not Muslim, you swore to protect and serve the people, not the government.

I'll reiterate. We chose the government. The government can't choose us. Period.

Now, read all of that again, and think.

This is where I'm going to leave you.

Artist: Toni Pinkevich

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (because we're secular),

A.