---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Dilip D'Souza <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 5:44 AM Subject: {Dilip's essays} A personal appeal To: dilips-essays <[email protected]>
April 12 2019 Here's a note I've sent out to some friends. You are reading this because I know and value our friendship, and I think you feel the same way. I’m writing this as a very personal appeal to you, as you prepare to vote in the Indian election over the next few weeks. You probably know my opinions about the BJP and Narendra Modi, so I won’t spell them out again here. Except for one thing, and the reason this is so personal: this is the first time in my nearly 60 years as an Indian that I actually feel fearful. I don’t say this lightly. Since you know me, you also know I follow no religion and have never claimed to be anything but Indian. (Human, too). But for too many people, my name marks me as a Christian that I am not. Over the last five years, the BJP’s leaders and fans have said plenty of truly hateful things about all kinds of people — Christians among them — that Prime Minister Modi has not once repudiated. Just two examples. One: on a TV programme in May last year that discussed a letter by the Archbishop of Delhi, a panelist said this: “If Hindus become militant, [Christians] won't last even one day.” (clip here: https://twitter.com/TimesNow/status/998583907325886465) To my knowledge, nobody in the BJP, let alone PM Modi, has condemned this clear reference to genocide (and other similar ones). Two: among posters on display at the World Hindu Congress in Chicago last September, some “denounc[ed] inter-faith marriages as ‘love jihad’ … question[ed] Sharmila Tagore’s marriage to the Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi way back in 1969 and whether their son Saif Ali Khan will force his wife, Kareena Kapoor to convert to Islam. … The wall posters appeared under the heading ‘Interfaith Marriages: Silent Holocaust of Hindus.’” ( https://thewire.in/…/world-hindu-congress-chicago-rss-vhp-h…) As you know well, mine is an “interfaith marriage”. Are my wife and I therefore participating in a “love jihad” and in a “holocaust of Hindus”? Among many others, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu spoke at the Congress. To my knowledge, neither he, nor anyone else at the Congress, nor PM Modi, has condemned these posters. Incidents like these terrify me. Thus this appeal: Please don’t vote for this party that has made hatred routine. Please vote for anyone except the BJP. I realize the alternatives are dismaying. But I can’t help feeling that if the BJP continues in power, my family’s life is under threat. I don’t say that lightly at all. yours, dilip PS: There's this from Amit Shah, repeated by his party: https://twitter.com/BJP4India/status/1116246724119371776 -- My book from Juggernaut: "Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Number" Twitter: @DeathEndsFun Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dilip's essays" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
