By Ananya S Guha
We are now living under conditions, where might is right and anarchy is let loose anywhere in the name of religion, caste, politics or community. So, Dalits cannot sport a moustache and cows cannot be used for economic benefit or as cattle.
By Adil Bhat
The aggressive education campaign pursued by the RSS and its affiliates is essentially preparing these young children for a war against an unknown enemy – the Muslims. When I asked them if they had ever met a Muslim, the entire lot jumped to respond, “No!”
By Santosh Bakaya
But nay, truth never succumbs, no matter what.
Its fire cannot be doused by any gunshot.
It will rise, and rise from the ashes
Branding a comatose humanity with the power of whiplashes.
By Somok Roy
From the anthropomorphisation of the nation in the form of a fair, Hindu mother goddess during the anti-colonial struggle, to the characterisation of the land as ‘pitr-bhumi’ and ‘punya-bhumi’ in a bid for a communal, majoritarian, cultural nationalism, a large section of the under-mass has never been able to relate to the images and notions of nationality.
By J Aslam Basha
It is only natural that minorities of all hues become anxious, especially when their voices are stifled by calls for adhering to a homogenous view propounded by the ruling BJP, which has long advocated the cause of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustani.
By Fahad Hashmi
The idea of ‘being a Muslim in contemporary India’, it could easily be inferred from happenings around us, is an ‘empty signifier’ where a Muslim could be one of these at a given place: a beef consumer, a trader of cows and calves, a child-lifter, a Romeo, a progeny of Babar, a Pakistani, a traitor, and, of course, a terrorist.
By Shreenidhi Rajagopalan
Now, thoughts are tinged with saffron
dots that escape visibility,
our WhatsApp forwards with 2002 splotches of fear.
By Mosarrap H Khan
While I concur with the anger and anguish that these pieces convey, there is something that makes me uncomfortable with them, not least because of my own supposed ‘secular-liberal’ belief. What worries me is the authors’ unwillingness to turn a critical gaze to their own subject-position – their ‘Muslim’ identity – the ground from which they launch these critiques.
By Aqsa Agha
At a time when our country’s future is being disassembled by the temptations of nationalism and creation of the figure of the ‘suspect’ intellectual, the struggle appears both enduring and challenging on one hand and inspiring on the other.
By Dar Wasim
RSS, the mother organisation of the BJP, started to spread its wings and preach Hindutva. RSS does not need any introduction. It is an organisation preaching the thoughts of its ideologue, M.S. Golwalkar. They are toiling hard to disseminate the historic slogan he wrote in his publication, Bunch of Thoughts in 1966: “In this land of ours, Bharat, the national life is of Hindu people. In short, this is the Hindu nation.”
By Ananya S Guha
Those who believe that the entire vision of a country will be reworked under a strong central government must wait and watch. Legerdemain has always been chants of the ruling party and political parties in general. The idea is to give space to all communities, castes, and religious groups in the country and rediscover their plurality and Indianness, which includes the majority Hindus.
By Prasanta Chakravarty
have you walked in front of those eyes?
if you did
you won’t do again
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 