The recent news of Shahrukh Khan facing a problem of being Muslim in India is marking a question on India, which is known as a secular country. He has been asked to leave India and go to Pakistan, his homeland. While making these statements, no consideration has been given that his father was a freedom fighter and Khan himself has been contributing to the entertainment industry of India for such a long time. So is this just a name or surname that will determine if we can stay in our own country or not? Whatsoever work has been done will be ignored in front of religion. My question is that why are we so different when our blood is the same. Why some are out castes even if they contribute in the development of the country? What can be done to stop this?
If we look into the history of ancient India then we see no religious violence on a large scale. In Medieval India examples of religious violence like destruction of temples and construction of Mosque by Muhammad bin Qasim at Debal, Sindh, destruction of Hindu temples at Dwarka and other places by Mahmud of Ghazni and more have been witnessed. The colonial era again has seen many such religious instances such as India Rebellion of 1857, Moplah Rebellion and Partition of India. The same trend continued even in Modern India with 1984 Anti-Sikh riots, North-East India militancy and religious involvement, Ayodhya debate, Bombay Riots, Gujarat violence etc.
But the biggest religious violence happened at the time of India Pakistan partition, when both the nations had seen enough blood-shed. Thousand and millions of people had lost their lives because of religion. What was their fault? Nothing. It was just that their names ended with Khan or Singh. There was so much hatred for each other that those feelings still persists today and do not spare anyone, neither a common man nor a celebrity. Above all this, the major setback is that till date we are unable to solve the problem that arises because of religious identity. All sorts of such things are hurdles on our way to progress as India on a global map is also known for its emerging economy, IT development and the largest democracy. We should not give place to age-old religious grudges.
It is enough and time to change. Though it is easy to write about the problems and really difficult to come up with one solution for the same. But it is the time to think about this. Real steps must be taken to resolve the religious problems at the earliest. Our leaders have to understand this and stop using religion to win votes and the sympathy of people. Leaders from different streams have to come up and should definitely consider religious bias in India as an insult to the nation as a whole. Socio-economic conditions of the backward society must be handled to eradicate the problem. Secular leaders on India must work on the reintroduction and deepening of secularism with deep understanding of vested interest of some in promoting conflict and violence. Also at an individual level we have to feel and believe in the equality of people irrespective of caste and religion. After all, we all are born with one of the four types of blood groups that do not differentiate us on the basis or religion.
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