If I were also a Khan... Mr. Shah Rukh Khan!

I am a citizen of a country where Hindus constitute majority, almost 80 percent. Yet they didn't vote to power the Right Wing Hindu Party(as they call it) JANSANGH  till it merged with all the splinter groups of major political parties that came together to form JANATA PARTY in 1977.
Are they(Hindus) idiots!

For the last 25 years or so, the three Super Stars of Bollywood are Salman Khan , Amir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. No three Hindu Super Stars ever simultaneously occupied the Mind Space of Hindu-dominated Hindustan for such a long period.

I am told the lead actor -- Ben Kingsley--of Richard Attenboroug's Gandhi film was originally Krishna Pandit Bhanji and his being Ben Kingsley in the film was considered a prerequisite for the film's acceptance by the largely SECULAR western audiences! In Bollywood, many actors and actresses including Dilip Kumar(Muslim), Sanjeev Kumar(Hindu), Meena Kumari(Muslim) had their screen names more popular than original names. All this for the sake of getting names that were easy-to-pronunciate not to hide their faith.
One more reason for Hindus to qualify as idiots!

In post-independent India, members of minority Muslim and Christian communities have risen to positions of power including President, Chief Minister, Field Marshal, Air Chief marshal, etc. And, during worst of communally tense situations, never ever minorities were forced to leave their homes for good except that in Kashmir where Hindus constituted a real minority. The Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley turned into indulgent mute spectators to the Ethnic Cleansing and Exodus of their Hindu neighbours. To camouflage this they are not termed as Hindus but Kashmiri Pundits!

There was no agitation over this in the Hindu-majority India because the successive governments and the media put the blame on the victims themselves for the Muslim vote banks country over. And, the rest of 'Hindu' India bought this theory so easily.
Yet another point for Hindus to qualify as idiots!

In the same state of J&K, in the December 2014 elections to the Assembly, BJP got the highest vote share and emerged as the second largest party with no single party in majority. But all the seats it won fall in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region where Muslims do constitute a significant minority. Its efforts at forming government were slammed as COMMUNAL on the ground that it didn't win a single seat from now -nearly-only-Muslim valley (from where Hindus were thrown out in 1989-90) and government led by BJP would mean an assault on SECULAR Kashmir and its  Kashmiriat , that is, the culture of living in harmony with people of different faiths!
Doesn't Kashmiriat mean LIVING IN HARMONY WITH MUSLIMS ONLY in today's Kashmir?

But this time things appear to be different. Many have come forward to trash this idea of Communal -Jammu & Secular-Kashmir. In fact in 30 years people have voted to power a party (BJP) with full majority at the Centre. The story is being repeated in many states.

Do Hindus not qualify as idiots now?

I am a bit confused: the three Khans still ruling the roost in Bollywood; no signs yet of Kashmiri Pundits(KPs) getting back to the Valley; both the Valley parties enticing BJP to form the govt but on their own terms and conditions; and, the Congress playing its worst ever Desh Raag that is music to the Secular ears.

If I were a Khan, I would still have lived as much safely and honorably as ever with my common sense buttons on. But as a Khan I would have always batted for Arif Mohammad Khan who was dwarfed by Rajiv Gandhi for having opposed the latter succumbing to the fundamentalist Muslims's pressure to annul the Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Bano case in which a more-than-60-year old lady was awarded immediate and adequate maintenance. Rajiv Gandhi used his brute majority in the Parliament to get the judgement nullified and left the old lady to fend for herself on whatever came her way as per Sharia norms!

If I were a Khan, I would have also batted for Shahid Siddiqui, a veteran journalist, for having spoken his mind with utmost boldness. In a TOI article last year, he had argued that in Hindu majority India, Muslims were coerced to pay Jazia (votes) through Fear Politics of Vote Bank in the name of Secularism! So true.

I would also bat for former Congress MP, veteran journalist and now BJP spokesman M J Akbar for having spoken his mind fearlessly more than a decade back, most likely in a write-up in the Sunday TOI. To the best of my memory, he had said that the practice of flawed secularism had made the majority Hindus perceive themselves as a minority which might have dangerous implications for future.

But I would have felt humiliated and dejected as a Khan if , as in post-9/11 US, every Muslim was considered a terrorist. No body, including the great Shahrukh Khan, now feels bad when strip-searched on arrival at US airports for just being a Muslim.

But I would continue to feel bad for the simple reason that the US is such an infant as a culture (less than 500 years old) and doesn't have that long an experience of dealing with diversity as India has: more than 33 Koti Devas, six systems of thought, three major faiths born here and Christianity descending on its western shores much before it travelled to Europe and, to cap it all, she became a second home to Jews and Parsis who fled their homelands to escape conversion or death.

As a Khan, Mr. Shah Rukh Khan, I would have also felt ashamed of having only few amongst us to match the likes of Arif Mohammad Khan, Shahid Siddiqui and MJ Akbar. Does it really take so much of courage to call a spade a spade? I would be ashamed of remaining silent on the hounding of Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nusreen. But I would have had shivers through my spine on even the possibility of Hindus copying what the most of Muslims have done to themselves and to the country right from 1947: sacrifice Health, Education and the Capacity to Question Everything in the name of Islam-in-Danger.

If India is a thriving democracy, contrast it with Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is mainly because of innately accommodating majority Hindus, not because of Muslims who chose to rise against the most humane judgement of Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case.
As a Khan, I would have hung my head in shame to see that every now and then a Dharmendra officially converted to Islam to marry his Lady Love (Hema Malini) without appropriately getting divorce from his first wife(Parkash). How many even Islamic countries have this anti-woman Law ?

And, Mr. Shah Rukh Khan, I would never ever like to be a Khan if it meant compromising with basic principles of Equality, Fraternity and Compassion in the name of Faith.

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