Shame Express-Ed

INDIA THAT IS BHARAT

WHAT is the size of secularism? How tall is it? How broad? Well, being a communal ignoramus, Satiricus does not know the exact measurements, but the other day a daily’s banner headline showed him how impressively big secularism is. It had just one word in gigantic type—Shame. The journalist in Satiricus was jolted. What on earth had happened? What communal calamity had befallen our secular swarga to call for such huge letters? Has the fiendish fellow in the PMO issued an official fatwa that all secularists be slaughtered? Has the vile VHP stealthily built the Rama-janma-bhumi Mandir when not a centimetre of this sacred secular soil should be so soiled? Has the “book-slayer” by name Batra slain another book exposing execrable Hinduism? No, nothing so trifling has happened.

What happened was far more disastrous. It was that a Hindu fed a roti to a Muslim, breaking his Ramzan fast. That explains it. That explains the sense of shock Express-ed through shockingly big type of Shame. Were the letters of the heading so big when 60 Hindus were burnt alive in a train? No. Were they so big for the newspaper’s report when Kashmiri Indian Muslim leaders went to Pakistan and got themselves photographed with internationally acclaimed terrorist Hafiz Saeed who has publicly vowed to cut up secular India into three Islamistans? No. Was this newspaper even slightly shocked when the previous prime minister declared that Muslims had the first right on the assets of secular India? No. So? So what? Shame on Satiricus that he should be shocked at Shame.

How To Fight Hindu Fundamentalists

THE trouble with Satiricus is that he is a Hindu. That makes him by definition an ignoramus. He thinks he knows he is a Hindu, but does he know what sort of Hindu, what type, what brand? He doesn’t. He doesn’t even know, for instance, that there are Hindu fundamentalists on one hand and fundamentalist Hindus on the other. That distinction was discovered by a learned columnist the other day, and having made this distinction the said columnist said, to be a fundamentalist Hindu was the only way to fight Hindu fundamentalists. This is indeed a revelation for this Hindu simpleton. For he has been taught for 60 years that every Hindu is a Hindu fundamentalist and the only way to fight him was to be a sworn secularist. Unfortunately, alas, what was the end of the 60-year war? Hindu fundamentalists are in power, and now they want everything abominably anti-secular. They want a democracy in which Hindus are not less equal than Muslims. They want uniform treatment for Muslims and Hindus with a uniform civil code. And as Congress leader Dr. Karan Singh has certified that India is a Hindu country, they want a befitting temple to the greatest Hindu god. Do these wants make for Hindu fundamentalists or fundamentalist Hindus? Satiricus does not know, because he is just a Hindu, with no adjectival additive before or after.

There is also another facet of fundamentalism about which this curious cuss is curious. It is that if Hindu fundamentalists need to be fought by fundamentalist Hindus, does that mean Muslim and Christian fundamentalists should be fought by fundamentalist Muslims and Christians? And in that case would it not mean that the fundamentals followed by Muslim and Christian fundamentalists are different from the fundamentals followed by fundamentalist Muslims and Christians? See? These are precisely the intellectual complexities that are beyond this bird-brained Hindu. Oh, well, maybe there are two different editions of the Quran and the Bible. For the Quran he knows says, kill the unbelievers, which is what the ISIS is doing on a mass scale in the Middle East, and in the Bible Jesus Christ said, those who do not believe in me, bring them before me and kill them, which was what crusaders and inquisitors did on an equally mass scale. What does this mean? It means two things. One : Despite not being a temple-going Hindu Satiricus does want the Rama temple, but he is too stupid to know if that makes him a Hindu fundamentalist or a fundamentalist Hindu. And two; he fails to see any difference between a Muslim or Christian fundamentalist and a fundamentalist Muslim or Christian. Why does he not see it? Maybe because he is a myopic moron.

But maybe not. As a professional wordsmith he would say the fundamental problem with the word fundamentalist is a problem between an adjective and a noun. You are either fundamentalist or you are a fundamentalist. Then what is Satiricus? He wouldn’t know, because as a journalist he is too illiterate to comprehend the niceties of grammar.