#India's obsession with Hindu #victimhood is not confined to Hindutva politicians who, one can assume, spread the canard of "Hindus under attack" for their own political agenda of power, control and coercion. This @Youtube video was posted on a family #WhatsApp group.
It shows a certain 'holy man', by his own description, a #Sanyasi telling his cheering audience a story to illustrate a) the harm caused by #secularism and b) how minority religions are favoured by the state.
It's a cock and bull tale, of course, but worth recounting to show the duplicity, the lies, the latent misogyny, the vacuous logic, the sheer vile propaganda of it all. Apparently, he is visited by a Maulvi and a Padre (!) who start arguing with him and then start beating him up!
When he appeals to a policeman standing by, the cop says, "this is a religious dispute, I cannot intervene sine I am secular" - the crowd roars its appreciation. Why do I say its a cock and bull story? Listen at 2"02'. This Sanyasi says in so many words that it's a made-up story!
Defenceless, he decides to abandon his vow of #ahimsa (#NonViolence) and fights back; the cop in this imagined tale intervenes, "You can't hit them! they are minorities!". The audience is all fired up. "If this needs us to change the 'blessed Constitution', so be it he concludes
This is false propaganda at so many levels. It's an imagined, made-up confection of lies. It suggests that Christians and Muslims are out for a fight with a holy man attired in saffron apparently for no other reason than religion.
It suggests to the audience that #Secularism is to blame for the failure of the State to protect him against imagined violence. It claims that he cannot defend himself because his imaginary attackers are from a minority religion. It is nothing short of vile wicked #propaganda.
How do we persuade them that even if every Indian subscribed to the Hindu religion, they would still need #Secularism to safeguard their liberties and freedoms from encroachment and usurpation by the religious zealots?
As Thomas Jefferson said: The old regime that predated the Republic established by the Constitution was "an unholy alliance of ‘kings, nobles, and priests’ that divided the people in order to rule them". It is #Secularism that guarantees all our freedoms, incl religious freedoms.
It's hard to know which is more fundamentally corrosive:
A) politicians playing the God card
or
B) holy men playing at politics,
or
C) choose this if you wish a plague on both their houses
A) politicians playing the God card
or
B) holy men playing at politics,
or
C) choose this if you wish a plague on both their houses
"
