India is no longer India. India is now an undeclared Hindu state. We realize this very much in the Muslim festival of EidDuring the observance of Muharram and the Christian celebration of Christmas. How many days before the goats, whose threats, whose words! Yesterday I went to two houses to fulfill the Eid invitation. In one we had mutton and biryani. Do you know what I ate at the other house? Chira-yogurt and various sweets. When we arrived the head of the house showed us the newly built house. I went inside the house and saw their three sons eating, but the atmosphere was cold and dark.
Actually, it’s just their home performance? This is the environment across the country. Now when the festival comes, these people have more doubts than joy! It is safe to avoid accidents anywhere. Sheh! What have we done for this country? What India has become before our eyes! I remember 40 years ago. in Philosophy from Guwahati University. I didn’t stay in hostels when I studied; I was in a rented house. But my friends were concerned about me so that I could concentrate on my studies during the exams. When I was away from the exams for a few months, Asitda (Asit Varan Chakraborty), who was then working at SBI, took me to stay with them. They lived in a small rented house behind Donbosco School in Panbazar. He is accompanied by his brother Sujith who works in a bank and his cousin Batsu who works in something private.
It was a Bengali family. After a few months with themMy friend Nechimul Majid took me to the Assam State Electricity Council government bungalow at Narangi where they lived so that I could study in a spacious house. Naseem’s father Abdul Majid, a famous film director, was working in Vidyut Parishad. One house is Bengali, the other is Muslim. We are the same, yet we have subtle cultural differences. This subtle difference is diversity. This diversity is an important feature of democracy. I still taste the egg soup they cook on Sundays when I was at Asitda’s place. When I was at Majidkhura’s house, their neighbors asked my aunt, “I only knew about your three sons Naseem, Kaju and Bhai. Do you have another son?” We got along so well. For the first time after wandering around for so long, I was lucky enough to eat at their house on time. Then I went to the bathroom and noticed a little fat on my body for the first time. What color and taste of their home cooked chicken and goat meat! Then I went to work outside Assam and lived in East-West, North-South of India. I saw the lifestyle everywhere. Surprisingly, once when I was in Calcutta, I could tell whether home was beyond home or by the taste and smell of the food. Our dress, cooking, music, art, painting—what variety everywhere! Food is not just food, but like history! Thousands of years of cultural exchange. Not that there was ever any conflict, but there was a flowing current of our culture through similarities, differences and evolution. Somewhere religion and culture are mixed.
But now in the name of Hinduism they want to destroy our eternal unity of diversity. Now they have epitomized discrimination. Do you know who planted the first seeds of this category?? The British, through the partition of Bengal and now who fed and watered him and kept him alive? Is it not BJP? Although this is a bit of a leap, let me give you another example – who was the main contributor to the creation of Israel? Great Britain and the United States. What do you see happening in the Middle East after the creation of Israel? Looking at the situation in Gaza! And look at the Asian subcontinent after partition. This is our dividing tradition. They will divide us and loot our wealth. Now see, as the economy of our country deteriorates, the cry of Hindu-Muslim divide is getting deafer. Petrol-diesel prices are increasing, the market is on fire. On the one hand they are asking us to be frugal, on the other they are blowing the horn of Hindu-Muslim war. Maybe I’m oversimplifying things a bit. But the general situation is not so? What happened to our country!