The Rainbow Neighborhood-JP Nagar

I have been looking for a house in JP Nagar. At last! I found it. Unlike in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and to an extent in Delhi, no one asked me my “full name”, to figure out whether I am Hindu or Muslim, no one asked me whether I eat non-veg.

The only reason, one landlady rejected me was that I am a single man, and they are looking for a family. Funnily, later they reached out to me with a lesser rental offer for the same place as they couldn’t find a “family”. I politely declined as I found another place, in the same neighbourhood.

While moving around in JP Nagar in search of a home, I was reading the names of owners, they were fairly mixed. One house had Ashiana written in Urdu and the house next to it had a huge OM. Then there was a house of Sebastian and further, another one was Kamat, next to Sarfaraz.

JP Nagar is way more diverse than even its neighbours Jayanagara, Basavanagudi, which have been completely Brahminized or made a large Jain Khap Panchayat. I hope other cities have similar diverse identities living together.

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Hindutva, the New Opium

When Arun Jaitley, the finance minister, was asked about unemployment data in an interview, his response was, who says unemployment is increasing. If it was increasing, there would’ve been massive mobilizations and protests, social agitation. According to him, India has not experienced such a wave of protests in the last five years ago. He is right in a way, even with rising unemployment, that too after demonetization, not many people are on the streets demanding employment/work.

Instead, a large number of youngsters are engaged in Gau Raksha, lynchings, Pakistan Murdabad protests, Ram Mandir movement and Jatts, Marathas, Patels, Kapus asking for a reservation in shrinking public education and employment.

They’ve forgotten that they need food, shelter and work. They are unaware that there are no jobs being created. What they know is that they should be proud to be Hindu or Indian, anyone not following their narrative should be killed.

There have been massive protests of contract workers, informal workers and farmers, they all went unrecorded because media quietly slipped them under the carpet.

This all shows how much we have gone down. Now, this war hysteria has forced everyone to be jingoistic, while forgetting that Prime Minister’s Office sucked up to a crony and sold off the country.

Jaitley is right because he and his colleagues have made the whole country addicted to Hindutva. The great Chinese civilization at its peak was destroyed by opium addiction. Hindutva is opium to India. Ask not whether you’re safe in your country, ask whether the cow is left straying on the streets.