This week, I exited a family WhatsApp group after listening to a particularly inaccurate, agitated and rambling rant – falsely attributed to the steel baron Laxmi Mittal (debunked last year) – about how Hindus have been “humiliated, subjugated and massacred”; how Narendra Modi is relentlessly criticised because he stands up for Hindus; absurd arguments about how secularism isn’t for India (“who the f*** cares if you are a secular state or not, Britain is not a secular state, it is a developed country”); and how we were ruled by “marauders” for 1,000 years.
I used to point out inaccuracies, flagged fake news and gently said what I believed about the rule of law, the Constitution and – what I have always considered – India’s compassionate, accommodative way of life. It made no difference to many family bigots, and my efforts appear so quaint, naive and archaic today.
Angry Hindus are everywhere. I am clearly not one. If I am angry, it is at my fellow Hindus for becoming what they have: insecure, hateful and hypocritical, willing to eagerly receive the slow drip of anti-Muslim poison. That slow drip is becoming a flood, unhindered even by the life-and-death crisis upon us, indeed even encouraged by it.
It is...
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