As Prime Minister Narendra Modi rocks his visit to the USA, gets a grand welcome from the political class, and warmly meets with various American business leaders, India’s increasing importance in the contemporary world is highlighted in front of the nation and the world. However, it becomes necessary to make the Western world – especially the colonisers and the ones who bully the world and change various regimes under the garb of establishing democracy in order to suit their own interests – aware of the view a common Indian has today about the recent history and the progress made by the country that became free in 1947 after centuries of rules by the foreigners.
Tushar Damgude, better known as the prime petitioner in the Bhima-Koregaon and Elgar Parishad case of 2018 that initiated the decisive crackdown against the urban naxals has therefore written a letter to the chiefs of these nations. He has written an open letter to the presidents of USA, Canada and the European Union. The letter is given below:
To the Presidents,
(America, Canada and European Union.)
Respected Sirs, Greetings from an ordinary citizen from a country that has been constantly under attack from foreign nations and was colonised for more than a thousand years.
The reason for the letter is that looking at the instances in the recent past, I decided to put forth the sentiments of 1.4 billion Indians in front of you as you are in the position of representatives of your respective nations.
Thus Sirs, in medieval times, the so-called European traders who were in search of resources were the greatest crisis brought upon the already crushed people of Asia and Africa under several monarchs and dictatorships. It is already infamous how, in the name of trading of Neel (Indigofera tinctoria), cotton, gold, silver, opium, rubber, sugarcane, muslin, spices, timber and various such things, the European traders entered the Asian continent and just till fifty years ago they immeasurably looted each and every citizen of the country and the natural resources. This wasn’t enough of the misfortune, almost every European country has on themselves the sin of tying human beings with iron chains and trading i.e. buying and selling as if they were animals. ‘The most sorrowful era’, is how this period can be described!
Along with the passage of time, the events which took place after the First and the second world wars, because of those, many countries in the Asian and African continents became free. Many of these countries have British-french-dutch or of such kind of cultural, academic, and political influence. India is one such country! A country of crores of poor people who never had got an ideal opportunity in any field. Now, it’s been seventy-five years since this country got independent. What did not happen in this country in seventy-five years? Education, medicine, military, finance, politics, art, technology, take any field… the people who never had experienced freedom, equality, fulfilment for centuries, those thousands and lakhs of poor people made the fifth largest economy in the world, the fourth largest military in the world, the democracy which can never be overthrown, acquired technology which orbits the Mars. Yes! in the small span of seventy-five years, a modern, solid India which is on the stage of the world in front of you all.
But then, when India started orbiting in space, the habitual offender and the racist newspaper New York Times showed a prying, illiterate, vernacular man with a cow trying to enter the elitist group. You all, who have taken the baton to teach the world the lessons of liberalism; are such racist and casteist people that a person of Indian origin, Rishi Sunak, who is a prime minister in a European nation, reads a few pages from your holy book, it makes you feel like a Skyfall.
If it was only this much, it could have been ignored but then again, the American representative who recently entered India, openly assures the American Senate that “I will go to India and pay attention to the human rights issues and better the conditions by doing appropriate arrangements”. Further, our minds are baffled and it makes us furious when America, Canada or the European nations openly support and give asylum to those who do bomb blasts, and terrorist attacks in our country and support the organisations like Khalistan who demand a separate country. It is the epitome of shamelessness when later in the name of freedom of expression, the Canadian government willingly gave support and liberty to those who supported and exhibited the assassination of Indira Gandhi who was the prime minister of our country.
Respected Sirs, are you still under the impression that the Asian continent is still a colony ruled by you? When will you realise that neither your representatives nor ambassadors nor you have the right to interfere in the internal matters of our nation? Have you checked your own conscious before putting us in the cage of a criminal when your own hands are full of the blood of people murdered by you? You all white supremacists, who in the name of human rights, rights of journalists, religious freedom and many other such things think you can declare the countries criminal according to your whims and fancies, will you dare to show the atrocities and exploitation put on the world through private, religious, financial institutions? The fuel which is used in your lavish cars and the blinding wealth is the aftermath of the loot that has been done to the Asian and the African people. Does your thick skin realise this? You are the people who destroyed many animal species just for fun, those who massacred people, iron chained, bought and sold humans for money, do you have any shame that not once you have apologised for these atrocities and sins and shamelessly you have become bastion holders of human rights. Are you even ashamed a little? For your hunger for colonisation and racism, you put the whole world into the abyss twice through world wars which caused immeasurable loss of human and economic wealth. Will it ever be compensated? Just to satisfy your thirst for blood and to keep your continent safe, you became such a monster to attack an Asian country twice with nuclear weapons. Have you even once apologised to those innocent people who were uncalled-for victims of your atrocities?
Further, if we think of letting this go as it’s past, even now you create terrorist organisations, overthrow regimes and rules which you do not want, and rule the countries with weapons of thousands of tonnes except in the countries in Europe. Do you remember humanity then? Do you have any shame when you do this? – The answer to this is NO, NO and NO.
Yes, respected nation-heads, yes! We still have many problems of our own in our country. We may not have fulfilled all those dreams of those lakhs of freedom fighters who martyred themselves to get us independence from your inhuman clutches, but, BUT, the ‘tryst with destiny’ which was made by the first prime minister of the country is being modulated with the changing times and we are marching forward to create a remarkable nation and the society. While we march forward, the racist, colonisers, expansionists countries, organisations, and people will become impediments in our path, they will defame us, slander us, but Sirs, this is a nation of Sant Dnyaneshwar who proclaims ‘जो जे वांछिल तो ते लाहो (each one in this world will get whatever he wants) it is also a nation of Sant Tukaram who tells ‘नाठाळाच्या माथी सोटा हाणणाऱ्या’ (to hit back those who are cunning and evil.) You should definitely keep this in mind. The enormous elephant who was deep lying in the darkness of illiteracy, poverty, superstitions, diffidence, ignorance and lethargy is now wide awake and this, you should definitely remember.
To end the letter, I just want to reiterate that you should do self-inspection, express your good qualities and remove defects. Taking care of the rights of the people of your country is your right but I hope that henceforth you’ll differentiate between the need of your people and greed. I further hope that the sin of selfishly quenching your monstrous thirst by snatching the food, liberty and esteem of others will not happen henceforth.
Yours,
Tushar Damgude
P.S. – In the extant letter the words ‘dear sirs’ or ‘respected sirs’ are used not because you may be entitled to it but because it is ingrained in our culture to show respect even to those who do not deserve it. Do take note of the same.
