After all what has happened during the past 63 years after India became Sovereign Democratic Republic in 1947 we've witnessed many big and small incidents and some that had direct negative impact on our society e.g. the emergency of 1975 that led to political unrest in the country and there was a massive crackdown on civil liberties, then the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1984 that led to anti sikh riots in which almost 3000 sikhs died and lastly how one could forget the Godhara genocide that happened in 2002 where almost 2000 muslim families have lost their loved ones and became homeless. India still survived and represented itself as a nation that is secular and is ready to accommodate people belonging to any region, caste, religion or creed.
But one thing as I go back to 1947 and start reading the events that took place after independence I found that major historical incidents that had negative impact on our society and that had shaken the roots of a secular nation were somewhere plotted political conspiracies. However, some people belonging to the political lobby of the state have different take on this, they would rather call it as the outcome of Congress's rule in the country for a longtime after independence and some would call it as the outcome of the pseudo-secular policies of the first national party of the state. I doubted their allegations but after I had gone through the nanvati commission's report I found that 3 main leaders that incited anti sikh riots namely Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and H.K.L Bhagat belonged to the Congress Party.
Now, as the India story progresses I came across an unsolved issue that has claimed 47,000 lives since 1989 the 'Kashmir' insurgency. It is very unfortunate to witness the bloodshed and communal disharmony in the valley which was once called the 'heaven on the earth' by the mughal emperor Shah Jahan and what's even more shocking is that we had 7 general elections from 1989 to 2009 and witnessed many Prime Ministers coming in and serving the nation namely V.P.Singh, Chandra Shekhar, P V Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deve gowda, I K Gujral and Dr. Manmohan Singh but none of them or their government had tried seriously to solve the Kashmir issue. Thousands became homeless, kashmiri pundits were thrown out of their homeland and thousands of muslims had to sacrifice their lives for their freedom. Witnessing the ignorance of the Indian Government towards Kashmir and it's people Pakistan sighted opportunity in this to weaken India internally and gave birth to many armed rebellions and militant groups and supplied these groups with logistical support, arms, recruits and training. But Pakistan is not the major player in this it is just harnessing a breed of homegrown rebellion against the Indian State. If we go back to 1987 after Sheikh Abdullah's death, his son Farooq Abdullah took over as the chief minister of the state of J&k. He eventually fell out of favor with the Central Government and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has him dismissed. A year later Farooq Abdullah announced an alliance with the ruling congress party for the elections of 1987. The elections were allegedly rigged in favor of Farooq Abdullah and this led to the rise in armed insurgency movement composed, in part, of those who unfairly lost elections. However, I must mention here that during Sheikh Abdullah's regime the state of J&K went through political instabilities as well many times and state went through several period of President's rule by the Federal Government. Not only Pakistan sighted opportunity in this but many other regional promoters of separatist ideology became heroes overnight by criticizing the Indian Government for the lack of sincerity for the failure of the repeated attempts at the resolution of the kashmir issue and by assuring people of kashmir, freedom (AZADI) and a major political front 'Hurriyat Confrence' came into existence.
While our NDA government was still struggling with it's own internal issues back in 2002, India witnessed a major genocide of 'Godhara' a town situated in the state of Gujarat. The state was ruled by the BJP'S most controversial leader Narendra Modi as it's chief minister at that time who has his hands in the genocide attacks against the muslims in living in Gujarat and asked the state police to stay back from any such incident and delay the rescue operations as per the 600 pages SIT’S report which 'Tehelka' scooped in. Centre did not took the incident that serious and avoided to intervene as BJP was the ruling party in the state at that time and it's hero Narendra Modi was the main accused of the whole incident. As a result 2000 muslims were killed brutally and hundreds of families lost their homes. Until today the main culprit is still ruling the state and justifies the fact that because he’s clean that’s why he got another chance to rule the state irrespective of the fact that Gujarat has Hindu population in majority.
After witnessing the most horrifying and brutal incidents in the Indian history I tried to recall the Jaliawala Bagh massacre that claimed more than 1000 lives but people who died there fought for the freedom of the nation so I found solace. But the people who lost their lives in the ongoing Kashmir insurgency or the Godhara Genocide or 1984 anti sikh riots how would their loved ones find solace because they’ve been the victims of either the Pseudo-Secular policies of the UPA or the anti muslim approach of the NDA and they didn’t fight against any government or dictator. They were the innocent civilians who have been victimized for dirty political motives. There were many more such incidents that took place post independence which were equally horrifying and brutal and that clearly implicates to the fact that INDIA has always been the victim of political conspiracies that were inspired by either extremist ideologies or fundamentalists.
No matter what we’ve witnessed in these years, what we are dealing with today and what’s in store for us in future the idea of a secular, civilized Indian society is still alive and I can say this confidently because the kind of atmosphere we have in the country now was exactly opposite some 20 years back. At that time people were more aggressive and more sensitive towards the controversial religious issues provoked by anti social elements of the society who call themselves the caretakers of the religion. Yes, no doubt there’s a serious threat to the nation’s integrity from the new term that came into existence ‘saffron terror’ promoted and supported by the right wing ideologists and our government need strict measures to tackle such a form of terror at the grass root level but still there’s hope and everyone could sense that Indian politics is taking a new shape and each party is trying to portray itself as a peoples party dealing with more social issues rather than religious or other controversial issues. There’s a tremendous shift in the ideologies of the orthodox leaders and they now talk about equality, social justice and secularism. Things have just begun to change from old orthodox politics to a new more liberal and transparent political approach and we will witness a new India if we won’t let any international power to interfere in our internal or external affairs.