One Jersey City Indian was beaten to death in Hoboken. Another remains in a coma after being discovered beaten unconscious on a busy street corner here earlier this month. And in a crudely handwritten letter, partially printed in The Jersey Journal, someone wrote, ''We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City.'' The note was signed ''The Dotbusters.''
That was in 1987.
Of course, that didn't stop planeloads of Indians immigrating to the US.
Unfortunately, many of those Indians brought with them, and new ones continue to bring with them, the baggage of caste and religious intolerance, of which there is plenty in the old country.
A few days ago, intolerant, hateful, bigoted Hindu-Americans managed to publicly show their colors in another city in New Jersey; in Edison, in order to celebrate India's independence day, these godawful Indians included in their parade a bulldozer.
Why did the #IBA decide to bring #bulldozers, which are symbols of hate in #India, to #Edison, given the discrimination plaguing India's religious minorities especially #Muslims?https://t.co/SxVVaCATeR via @azadessa #modi
— Sriram K (@congoboy) August 27, 2022
I direct you to that news report to understand why those goddamn Muslim-hating people from India brought a bulldozer to the parade. If you don't have the time to read that news report, but want to understand it, here's a comparison: Hindus politically using a bulldozer is like the Klan people burning crosses. If only there was a way to deport those goddamn Hindu assholes!
The event in Edison, NJ, is an echo of the regression in India, where the Hindu majoritarian party is rapidly taking India away from democracy and making it an electoral theocracy. The public space is becoming more and more Hindu in sights and sounds, and the public identities of other faiths are getting erased by the day.
I have been worried about all these for a long time. And have blogged in plenty about it, like in the following unedited post from June 2014.
**********************************************
I typically reach the park well before dawn breaks. It is warm even at that hour, with an occasional breeze.
But, I am rarely ever the only person that early at the park. I am even more amazed at the sight of women, walking alone by themselves, that early. At least this part of the old country is far away from the rape news geography.
Slowly they come. In ones and twos, and by the tens as the sunlight begins to stream in. One of those I have seen every morning is an older gentleman who walks slowly with his right hand holding a cane. Always clad in the same outfit--a white lungi, a white shirt, and a white Islamic skullcap.
When I see that older Muslim gent, I become all the more ticked off at the public address system. Why? Let me explain.
This is a public park. A government owned and maintained park. Yet, throughout the more than an hour that I am there, they blast--very loudly--Hindu religious music. Only Hindu religious music. Nothing but Hindu religious music. As if it is not a park but the grounds at a Hindu temple.
The older Muslim's outfit made his religion obvious. There could be, among the walkers, people of faiths other than Hinduism. Perhaps even an atheist or two. (I do not count for I am a citizen no more of this old country.) Why should the government bombard Hindu religious music on people who do not care about Hinduism?
Of course, this is not the first time that I am blogging about this atrocious deluge of religion in a public space. But, it is even more of a sore point given that the sociopolitical environment is now charged/changed with the election of the Hindu nationalist party to power at the federal level.
The attempt to make the public space secular was perhaps a non-winnable fight from the very beginning of an independent India. As India started the process of becoming a republic, Jawaharlal Nehru strongly advocated for Rajaji to transition from the office of Governor General and become the country's first president. Nehru opposed the rival candidate, Rajendra Prasad, who was backed by Vallabhai Patel:
I suppose I am stuck with the loud Hindu religious music every morning at the park. At least it is temporary for me, and I will soon return to my sanctuary--the public space by the river where no government, or private group, blasts any religious music. But, that old Muslim gent has no choice, I guess.
This, too, is India for you.
I typically reach the park well before dawn breaks. It is warm even at that hour, with an occasional breeze.
But, I am rarely ever the only person that early at the park. I am even more amazed at the sight of women, walking alone by themselves, that early. At least this part of the old country is far away from the rape news geography.
Slowly they come. In ones and twos, and by the tens as the sunlight begins to stream in. One of those I have seen every morning is an older gentleman who walks slowly with his right hand holding a cane. Always clad in the same outfit--a white lungi, a white shirt, and a white Islamic skullcap.
When I see that older Muslim gent, I become all the more ticked off at the public address system. Why? Let me explain.
This is a public park. A government owned and maintained park. Yet, throughout the more than an hour that I am there, they blast--very loudly--Hindu religious music. Only Hindu religious music. Nothing but Hindu religious music. As if it is not a park but the grounds at a Hindu temple.
The older Muslim's outfit made his religion obvious. There could be, among the walkers, people of faiths other than Hinduism. Perhaps even an atheist or two. (I do not count for I am a citizen no more of this old country.) Why should the government bombard Hindu religious music on people who do not care about Hinduism?
Of course, this is not the first time that I am blogging about this atrocious deluge of religion in a public space. But, it is even more of a sore point given that the sociopolitical environment is now charged/changed with the election of the Hindu nationalist party to power at the federal level.
The attempt to make the public space secular was perhaps a non-winnable fight from the very beginning of an independent India. As India started the process of becoming a republic, Jawaharlal Nehru strongly advocated for Rajaji to transition from the office of Governor General and become the country's first president. Nehru opposed the rival candidate, Rajendra Prasad, who was backed by Vallabhai Patel:
Mr. Patel’s choice for president was Mr. Prasad, a teacher and lawyer who had just presided over the assembly that drafted India’s constitution. This frustrated Mr. Nehru, who tended to be annoyed by Mr. Prasad’s public religiosity – by, for instance, his stated dedication to renovating the Somnath temple in Gujarat.It was not that Somnath was a Hindu temple, but the temple had a long history of tension between Hindus and Muslims. After the bitter partition along Hindu/Muslim lines, after the tragedy of lives lost and displaced, and property destroyed, Nehru did not want to trigger more communal tension with a Hindu president inaugurating the renovated temple. Nehru lost that fight. I suspect that the fight to keep religion off the public space was also lost; I cannot imagine Rajaji, despite the religious scholar that he was, accepting the invitation to inaugurate the temple.
I suppose I am stuck with the loud Hindu religious music every morning at the park. At least it is temporary for me, and I will soon return to my sanctuary--the public space by the river where no government, or private group, blasts any religious music. But, that old Muslim gent has no choice, I guess.
This, too, is India for you.
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