By Robert Clements
The Monster, Our Brother..!
The WhatsApp message that came to me was from a phone number of an Indian in America, it said, ‘Terror has only one religion.’ However, it was not making a casual statement, it was mocking a particular religious community, with statistics and data that had fake facts dripping from the pen of the writer.
After sending it to a group which had a sizable number of members from the same community he’d attacked, he then sent another message saying, ‘Sorry wrong group!’
Clever tactic by someone who wanted to antagonize people, then say, ‘I didn’t mean it for you!’
I looked at his message, and pondered over why he’d sent it.
I had seen the fellow, an inconsequential, insignificant fellow of little or no importance: Therein lay the problem; therein lies the problem.
These are men and sometimes women, who have no confidence in themselves, are highly insecure, and instead of trying to pull themselves up by their britches, to use an old English term, they use every means possible to pull others down.
Unfortunately for them, being weak, and having to deal with stronger people around, they use the easiest weapon available, one they know they can get away with: Either language, colour or religion.
‘Look!’ they shout, ‘he’s speaking in English, but this is Maharashtra!’
Or “Hey, he’ wearing ‘other clothes’, be careful of him!’ Many fall prey to this clever weapon.
Most politicians use it well and to their advantage. When they want to divide a vote bank and get votes for themselves, they draw on the religion/ language card and like sheep, we voters forget reason and follow.
It is time all of us learn to avoid this trap. And for this we need to understand that the person whose language we don’t understand, whose religion we don’t follow, still has a mouth, a nose, two ears and a tongue like ours that can wag, thirteen to a dozen. He’s as human as you and I are.
There’s this story of a man who’d camped in a desert. As he looked out into the darkness of the night, he beheld a monster. The monster walked closer and closer to him, and the light from his lamp made the monster look even more monstrous in the sands. The man unsheathed his sword and ran to the figure, and suddenly realized what he’d been looking at was the gigantic shadow of a man. He ran closer, peered hesitantly at the face, and found it was his brother!
When you get messages hitting out at a particular religion or lingual community, look closer, recognize it is an attack on a brother: Then find the real monster, most often an inconsequential, insignificant fellow of little or no importance sitting on a statesman’s chair! Stop that monster! Till 1967, seventeen states in the USA, banned interracial marriages!
That same year the law was found unconstitutional and thrown out. Immediately after that public approval of interracial marriage rose from around 5% in the 1950s to around 80% in the 2000s! Which means that because of a stupid law, people felt marrying from another community was wrong.
And because they felt it wasn’t good, they segregated blacks and whites, not just in schools, and buses but sadly also in churches! After all, they felt, their daughters could fall in love with an African-American while listening to a sermon!
A law that disallowed interracial marriage, made racial hatred deeper.
And as we see such laws passed closer home, all that will happen is deeper divisions. In America, just over a half century after that draconian law was thrown out, an African American became the President
Laws that cause divide, cause deep rifts. Rifts that take ages to heal, and sometimes never heal, as with the case of Trump, exploiting racist sentiments he knows still exist in those who give him support.
It is so easy to bring about racial and religious discrimination! And we in India, have even learned to coin new terms for it! Such discrimination isn’t entirely new.
‘Hey Moses, your wife is black!’ his brother Aaron and sister Miriam must have shouted after they saw their brother had married Zipporah a Cushite woman, and they fought with her, till God intervened and what was Miriam’s punishment? These words may not be actually from the Bible but I can imagine a furious God saying, “So you’re proud of being white is it Miriam? Okay I’ll even make you whiter!” And she became white with leprosy!
I can’t think of a more fitting punishment!
Which makes me wonder what our punishment is going to be, as He watches with concern our own racial and religious discrimination?
Coming back to the USA, I wonder what would have happened if the law had not been thrown out in 1967? We don’t have to look far to find out. Just across the very narrow sea we saw a genocide in Sri Lanka as Tamils were killed. We see the same in Pakistan as Christians and Hindus have hardly any rights, and today the same is slowly happening to India, as hate is being manufactured by hate machines and a hate manufacturing political party! Progress is a coloured path, as America discovered all over again. A path which rolls out a carpet of unity through diversity. Any other method, which might get votes as short term gains, will only see the crumbling of the carefully built red ramparts of the fort of our nation!
Do remember what I said at the beginning of this piece, that when a weak man with a weak ideology has to deal with strong people around or a robust constitution, he or she uses the easiest weapon available, one they know they can get away with: either language or religion or the colour of your skin. But what is the monster you and I run to attack with our unsheathed sword?
Our own brother..!
(The Author conducts an Online Writers and Speakers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883 or [email protected])