If a person says he wants Muslim cattle traders to be left at the mercy of violent cow vigilantes — where the state or the police must refuse to provide security — he will be labelled a ‘bigot’ and violent troll wishing for lynching of Muslims. But if you wish for lynching of Brahmins, you are apparently a secular-liberal intellectual. This is the perversion Indian society has accepted as normal.
This perversion was displayed with full shamelessness today when a ‘journalist’ named Hartosh Singh Bal, who is often seen on TV news channels as a ‘neutral commentator’, almost wished that Brahmins die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Kashmir.
This is what he tweeted:
https://twitter.com/HartoshSinghBal/status/897691286798512128
For the uninitiated, Article 35-A of the Indian constitution empowers the state government of Jammu & Kashmir to define permanent residents of the state and the rights and privileges they can enjoy. It makes sure that no one from the rest of India, no matter how pacifist and Kashmir loving one might be, can buy an inch of land in Kashmir. The article doesn’t make any special provisions for Brahmins or any other caste by the way, not even for Kashmiri Pandits.
Essentially, it is a discriminatory article that is used to further the communal agenda that is often dressed up as “Kashmiriyat“. Recently, people have demanded that this article should go and Indians should be allowed to buy land in Kashmir and settle there.
However, for Bal, this is blasphemy. How can a non-Kashmiri, especially a Brahmin, settle on the pure Islamic land and defile it? So he virtually challenged the Brahmins to settle in Kashmir without state protection.
Anyone can understand what he was hinting at, and almost wishing for. Though such hatred for Hindus in general and Brahmins in particular is seen as ‘normal’ in the secular-liberal crowd, people on Twitter bashed Bal for his bile:
https://twitter.com/prabhatjoysingh/status/897705603883311104
https://twitter.com/Pogbalohic/status/897792233272782850
https://twitter.com/ramprasad_c/status/897797035155480578
https://twitter.com/BeingRight/status/897803245367808000
https://twitter.com/vinod_sharma/status/897788210553643008
As expected, not a single person identifying himself or herself as ‘secular-liberal’ condemned Bal for his hatred, most probably because this hate is what makes a person ‘secular’ and ‘liberal’ in India.