I have been surfing the internet, looking to share the pain and anguish and came across this soulful column by Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found in The New York Times.
He says: In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.........
Do read this column, click here.
I so agree with it completely. The first time I realise that I was a Muslim was in 1992, when the Babri structure was brought down and perhaps realised with a pang that my being an Indian would in some quarters be viewed as suspect. Since then India continues to be fragmented. It is not just external agencies which are doing this, but our own politicians as well. This time, Bombay has risen, against the politicians and rightly so. While it may take time to recover, now I have a glimmer of hope that Bombay and indeed India will recover and be a united front against terror and divisions - no matter what the source.
Jai Hind.
Photograph: Gateway of India with the Taj Mahal Hotel in the background (Wikimedia.org)
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