Editor,
Kudos to you on an excellent editorial ( ST Oct 21, 2015) captioned ‘Societal Conversations’. While agreeing with your gentle chiding to the majority religious community for not creating a similar platform at Christmas, the fact remains that in Shillong Christmas is enthusiastically and very visibly, celebrated by all communities. So one could condone this lapse, if indeed it is one. Incidentally the Unitarian Church, on their Unitarian Day, make it a point to have representatives of all religious heads and have been doing so , at least in the last 25 years or so that I had the good fortune of attending, Coming to the event at hand , I was fortunate to have attended it. Some of the salient points brought out by the religious leaders who were allowed only a few minutes, need mentioning, The secretary of the Rama Krishna Mission was on the dot when he suggested that beyond attendance at the Harmony meeting these leaders could perhaps organise visits to the various Puja Mandaps by them and their followers to promote a sense of sharing. This brings me to another very relevant issue. The President of the Central Puja Committee, Naba Bhattacharjee, during his speech , brought out a valid point that the word tolerance which was generally used to define secularism was not quite apt. Tolerance connotes, he said, something not so agreeable that one “tolerates”. He would much rather we say acceptance. Good so far! But when the turn of the Honourable Governor came to address the gathering, he said that he would go a step further and use the word “respect” in addition to acceptance. While agreeing with both in their little semantic word play I, as a Shillongite, could not but suppress a chuckle because we here in Shillong have gone past all that. Here we PARTICIPATE, yes participate in each other’s religious festivals- and have been doing so for – well – always Not quite relevant to the issue but since one of the speakers touched upon the word “Hindutva”, I must share a thought with the readers. In the word “Hindutva” , the “Hindu” part of it actually had no religious connotation. Its connection is with “Hind” , which is the Persian / Urdu word for India. A mischievous Congress Party, since the word was propagated by the RSS, ably assisted by an equally mischievous , elitist section of the English media made it into a dirty word. They were in no small measure assisted by a fringe of the Saffron brigade who exploited it to further their bigotry. “Bharatiyatta” would be appropriate – but it is a mouthful. So I suggest some wise person come up with another word- if indeed one is required! And put “ Hindutva” in the waste paper basket. The idea would be to coin a word that will define the all inclusive “Indianness” of this ancient land. This may pose a problem of a different kind because all inclusive in today’s milieu will, together with the great things of this country, heritage, tolerance, respect for each other’s beliefs etc. , need to encompass the growing intolerance and religion and caste based divisiveness being let loose on our culture by the political class. So what’s the good word to be? How about something like “OmBharatiyatta @#&*@#^ ….” ?
Yours Etc.
Lt. Col. AnjanDatta (Retd.)
Shillong -4