Remembering Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, I am tempted to think that if Martin had been an Indian—alive today—he would certainly have scribbled something like the following.
They first came to avenge the Love Jihad. I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muslim. Then they came for the Ghar Wapasi. I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Christian. Then they came for the saffronization of Sikhs. And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Sikh. Then they came for the de-Ambedkarization of Dalits, And ‘purification’ of Adivasis in the caste culture. And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Dalit or Adivasi; I didn’t speak up because I was an OBC, an enslaved shudra. Then they came for the erasure of Phule and Periyar from textbooks. But by that time all the ‘minorities’, 90 per cent of the population— Muslims, Chritsians, Sikhs, Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs— Were put in their ghettos, to serve the Hindu nation with its capital at Nagpur, Allowing the real minority, less than 10 per cent of Indian population— The racist-casteist-misogynist thugs, led by the Neanderthals of Nagpur, Hiding behind the deceptive label of Hindu majority— To fool and rule—and make mincemeat of—the masses. The dhoti-clad Neanderthals of Nagpur, funded by the Corporate crooks, Always invoke their Vedic-Puranic ancestors Who invented supersonic aeroplane before they made wheels, And who concocted Caste, Untouchability and Varnashrama Dharma To fool and rule and divide the humanity.
Braj Ranjan Mani is the author most recently of Knowledge and Power: A Discourse for Transformation (2014). His earlier and challenging work Debrahmanising History (2005) has undergone many reprints, and is now available in an extensively revised edition (2015).