The Preamble of our constitution puts it clearly that India is Sovereign Socialist SECULAR Democratic Republic... But the question is ..are we working towards building such a society, a society where various religious perspectives co exist in perfect harmony..? A society where every Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian consider each other as humans rather than as representatives of their particular sects or religions.? A society where every person accepts the positives of a person irrespective of their religious beliefs.? Well .. I would say that most of us do envision such a society and truly wish for it. But if it is so then who are the ones pulling the strings behind the scene.? Who are the ones who actually benefit from poisoning the pluralistic ethos of tis nation. The answer for this question that I have got is that its none other than the polititians of this very nation.
Its the recent debates on beaf that made me think in this respect. Right now we are having so many debates going on around the country on the righteousness of banning a food product in a country in the so-called interest of the majority.This idea gives rise to two questions in my mind. The first one is that does being a minority mean being a non-entity? Don't their votes matter in the electoral process conducted every five year.? Are these minorities not the citizens of this nation ? The government doesnt have the right to choose what a person should eat unless it takes complete care of his life and ensure him a balanced diet ireespective of economic backgrounds.Even if the government is to ban some food product in a nation, it should be on the general interest of the public. It should not be done to please a particular religious section of the society. The government of a India doesn't represent any particular group of people in India. it represents and is responsible for India as a whole. It is suppossed to'take care of the reasonable interests of the Indian society as a whole.
A statement was being made repeatedly by the advocates of the Beaf Ban that cow should not be slaughtered because it is considered sacred by the Hindus. Well with all due respect for that religious belief may i ask you something? Being myself a Hindu, let me ask you that dont we consider Rat as sacred? Dont we consider it as the vehicle of Lord Ganapathy..? But still we kill them.. right?.. Dont we consider snake a sacred being..? We still kill them ..right? of course one might argue that its a question of survival. One might argue that they can prove harmful to us while cow is a harmless creature. One can also say that they are useful to us in many ways. Well my answer for them is that it can be understood as a decision conducive of the workings of the noble intentions behind them had they been done on a humanitarian basis. If so we could ban the selling and consuming of meat as a whole whether that be chicken, mutton, beaf or whatever. Most of these things are also harmless and are helpful to us in one way or another.If someone tells me that they are not sacred to any particular religion practiced and propagated in our country, I will go back to a point that I mentioned before that the problem occurs exactly at this point when it has religious undertones. Do Muslims ask their friends or neighbours in this country to abjure some food product since its anathema for them.? Well.. I think they dont.. Everyone has the right to believe in his own religion and practice its ways, provided it doesnt do any serious harm to anyone else. No citizen is a nonentity when it comes to the government of the country. Every opinion matters. If someone wishes to implement a ban on a particular thing just because his or the religious beliefs of a majority in the country considers it wrong the government should not blindly follow the crowd. Just because a majority believes in something that doesnt give any certificate of infallibility to that idea.
My opinion is that the government should rethink its views and if possible repeal its stand on the Beaf Ban considering the pluralistic fabric of our country and the high expectations on which this entire nation was built. It is the dream of a generation which saw the repercusssions of religious intolerance that we see in the Preamble of our constitution in the term 'Secular'. The engineers of Indian constitution made it envisioning an India where its not religion or colour or economic disparities that judge a person or set his privileges, but the fact of being a son/daughter of this land.This is more like a prayer rather than a criticism, to the polititians of our country not to make use of the public in meeting the needs of your greed. Lets all work together for a better SECULAR India and take the country forward in the path of development..
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