Hindu groups like Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parisad have expressed a strong objection against non-Hindus or non-believers attending the Garba events held in various cities to celebrate the Hindu festival of Navratri. Members of Bajrang Dal even urged organizers in cities like Hyderabad to check non-Hindu participation in the celebrations by adopting an ‘Aadhar card mandatory’ policy.
The VHP extended its absolute support to the idea which, on face value, might appear a bit harsh. “Non-believers coming to religious gatherings is not right. Such people, when coming to religious gatherings, come with an aim to cause disruption. Identification should also be done for security reasons,” said VHP leader Vinod Kumar Bansal, not mincing words at the idea of non-Hindus attending the celebrations held in honor of the Hindu Goddess, Maa Durga.
Outfits like Bajrang Dal and VHP don’t have the luxury of sounding politically correct or conforming to Lutyens’ Delhi sensitivities. They have their hands full fighting an uphill battle against the serious threats facing Hindu society. Often they speak what others also feel, but choose not to say out loud. In the process, they often end up rubbing the pseudo liberals the wrong way because the truth doesn’t sit well with this section of society that thrives in selective blindness.
As per reports in several Hindi news outlets like Bhaskar, Patrika, ETV etc, Mohsin Khan, Talib Khan and others trespassed a Garba gathering in Pali, Rajasthan and started harassing girls & women. When the Hindus protested, they resorted to knife attacks leaving four, including a mere 10-year-old, seriously injured. No major media house covered this horrific incident, lest the secular fabric of this country gets wrinkled.
Pattern of disrupting & attacking Hindu festivals
This not a unique standalone incident of a Hindu religious gathering disrupted by non-Hindu anti-socials. Attacking Hindu festival processions has now become an every-year thing. We have grown a thick skin to it or have become inured towards it, hence it doesn’t even bother us anymore.
Communal tensions between groups of two communities gripped Asansol of West Bengal last year when “unknown” miscreants targeted a Ram Navami procession and ended in the death of one person. Back in 2016, fanatical Islamists had targeted and desecrated several temples at Jalgaon Jamod, Maharashtra during Ram Navami. Devotees were assaulted, murtis of deities were vandalized and the prasad was spilled all over the ground. Shops owned by Hindus were ransacked and torn down before police could arrive. This year too, five people sustained injuries when a similar attack was carried out on the Ram Navami procession in Ramgarh.
Ram Navami is not the only festival that sends these radicals into their deranged fits. In August 2017, 6 Hindus suffered critical injuries when Alam, Sahnoor, Rauf, Munnu attacked a Krishna Dol festival procession in UP’s Barabanki district.
A mob of around 70 men from a “specific community” attacked a Ganesh Chaturthi pandal organized by the SC community in Warangal, Telengana this year. The unruly mob rushed into the pandal where devotees were performing Ganesh pooja peacefully and singing devotional songs. Miscreants started with flinging shoes at the altar, screamed slurs, and rounded up their act of violence by assaulting women devotees.
Communal disharmony clawed into Jaipur when Kanwar Yatris passing through Muslim dominated areas were attacked by a radical mob. A major “minority” mob blocked Delhi highway in front of the Galta Gate Eidgah and took to their common routine of ‘stone-pelting’. 10 kanwariyas sustained critical injuries and were taken to a nearby Government hospital.
What was known to be a peculiarity of Kashmiri radicals who attacked the armed forces in J&K, is now a common occurrence across Bharat. Be it any God of the Hindu faith, certain elements in society manage to form a violent mob within minutes and attack the devotees during poojas and celebrations regularly. MP Hukmdev Narayan Yadav had enlisted similar incidents in Bihar wherein Hindu devotees were barred from carrying out religious processions on roads passing through Muslim areas, the police being a mute spectator.
Again, incidents of Muslim men posing as Hindus and befriending Hindu women with a vile scheme in mind, is not unknown either.
Bearing all these developments in mind, if Hindu groups are proposing extra cautions in Hindu religious and cultural occasions, how is it unfair and extreme? Precaution is always better than cure. When anti-Hindu mindsets have become so widespread and deep-rooted across the country, such steps are the bare minimum Hindus should do to safeguard their own.
And let’s not beat around the bush either – no Hindu group has any objection to Jains, Parsis, Sikhs etc, i.e. the real minorities, participating in their celebrations. It is for Muslim progressives to reflect on where their community has gone wrong that others want to keep them at an arm’s length; what drives this visceral hate against ‘idol-worship’ and ‘ploytheism’?
The pseudo-liberals have deliberately chosen to keep their heads buried in the sand, but that doesn’t change the truth. Hindu festivities have become marked for disruption in this country; unless we want all our joys to be turned into sorrows, let the Aadhar be held up before admission into any religious occasion.
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