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Tyranny of the minority

According to a study, it takes only 10% of the population to remain committed to an idea for it to become majority opinion. In India, we have for so long believed that the minority needs to be protected from the majority that we are now unable to see the majority being reduced to second-class citizens in their own country.

India has a long history of minority appeasement or more correctly that of pseudo-secularism. Indian politicians from the Nehru-era believe in doling out gifts to Muslims at the cost of majority Hindu population. A shining example of this is the Shah Bano case in which the Indian parliament overturned the decision of the court to grant alimony to protect the so-called Muslim personal laws.

In recent years, this appeasement has increased to nauseating proportions. In December 2012, the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh launched a scheme to give Rs. 30,000 to 10th pass girls for further studies or marriage. But this scheme only applied to Muslim girls! The SP government also released terrorists captured by the ATS owing to their religion. They were later arrested again after UP government was strictly reprimanded by the High Court.

A more sinister game is currently being played out in West Bengal. Recently in Basirhat, a small city in West Bengal, a Class 11 Hindu student allegedly posted something on Facebook which was derogatory to the Muslim population. Muslims started rioting and burning houses and shops belonging to the Hindu community. That boy's family had to leave the city before being arrested by the police. Many lives were lost in this incident. No prizes for guessing which religion the dead belonged to.

Throughout all this, the "liberal" media either remained silent or relegated this news to a side-bar or ticker. No prime-time debates, no award-wapasi, no hashtags started trending on Twitter to oppose this incident. There wasn't an utterance of the now infamous word - intolerance!

We have to ask ourselves if we are already living under Sharia law where blasphemy is punishable by death or are we still the secular, peaceful country where people don't take their religion too seriously and where the state machinery and law doesn't discriminate based on one's religion. The time has come for the majority to come together to oppose this tyranny of the minority.
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