#TalktoAMuslim trend has the nefarious agenda to alienate Indian Muslims

#TalktoAMuslim is the recent addition to extremely communal hashtags that have become a common affair on social media these days, as 2019 elections are fast approaching. This hashtag was started by Gauhar Khan and later shared by Swara Bhaskar—both of them known for their nonsensical previous ‘social’ campaigns that resonated in liberal eco-chambers. This hashtag can be inferred in only one possible way that the Muslims in India are being discriminated against and that the majority of Indians refrain from engaging in a communication with the Muslims and that we need a social media rallying cry to bring us out of this hypothetical reality.

Before delving deeper, we must remember Swara’s inhuman commercialization of the Kathua rape incident which aimed to shame all Hindus. Swara frequently retweets Rahul Gandhi’s tweets, including the hypocritical ones, like the one in which he supported freedom of expression, while his family has a history of banning arts and cinema that criticised it.

Hiding behind the garb of Islamophobia, this loaded hashtag presumes that the majority of Indians are intolerant of Muslims and Islam. It presents India in a manner that the Muslims are subject to racial discrimination and persecution in India. India is the same country which has the second largest Muslim population in the world a minority and spends millions of rupees every year through Minority Commission on welfare of 180 million Muslims, even in the state and districts where the Muslims are in majority.

Encouraging Indians to talk to Muslims can also be interpreted to mean that Muslims are not Indians, which on a personal level disgusts me and diminishes the little respect I had for the two so called celebrities. It is equivalent to asking for the number of Muslims in the Indian Army— it doubts the ‘Bhartiyata’ of Muslims. Armed with their clever ploy and tactics of dividing Indians that they’ve beautifully learned from their colonial masters, they are here to encourage the Muslims to further themselves away from their fellow Indians. I, on the other hand encourage every Muslim to be very wary of people like them.

The hashtag is racist—as Hindus are a majority in the country, it indirectly blames the Hindus for sidelining the Muslim population, for somehow not letting them be a part of the talk. Without any evidence, it is somehow perceived by these celebrities that the Hindus are responsible for this hypothetical situation and they should lead the ‘talk’. Yes, there have been incidents in the past that have created a Hindu-Muslim divide, and it has been as such since the first Islamic invasions, but putting all the blame for this divide on present day Hindus is laughable at best and reprehensible at worst. Islam has never had a pleasant and peaceful co-existence with any other religion in the 1300 years of its existence, be it the Pagans, the Christians (the crusades), the Zoroastrians, other ethnic and tribal religions of the Middle East and Africa that were completely wiped out, Hinduism or Buddhism. But even after all that we have built a society in India that people don’t see your religion before talking to you. We have not forgotten that after the creation of Pakistan, the ancestors of present day Indian Muslims chose India as their home. They showed their trust in a Hindu majority government. They trusted Sanatan Dharma to be secular and not like the Islamic Regimes of the Middle East where every ‘Kafir’ is prosecuted. This long-lived trust is something that few societies are able to build. This happened because of the Hindus. After the creation of Islamic majority country, it was anything but obvious that the Hindu majority India should be a Hindu Rashtra, like the Jewish State of Israel. The Hindu leaders of the time, who wrote the constitution, did not differentiate on the basis of religion. A Muslim is as much an Indian as a Hindu. Yet, the liberal narrative is trying to widen the rift that was created by decades of Muslim appeasement politics. Blaming the widened gap on Hindus after everything that has happened in history is nothing short of hate for the Hindus. Hinduphobia is at an all time high, with terms like Hindu Terror, Saffron terrorists etc being used by the opposition without repercussions.

This hashtag is the new victimhood. It’s segregation. It’s alienating the Muslims. Remember the ‘Intolerance brigade’? Or the ‘Award Wapsi Gang’? This is just another sequel and like the previous ones, will pass without making a dent. A few liberals act like India was a paradise for Muslims before May, 2014 and they are isolated after Modi’s election. People have had enough of this victimhood narrative. This is less of a right-wing conspiracy to rule over Muslims than a media hit job to push Muslims back into their fearful selves. It appears that the liberals can’t get Muslim block votes without giving them a false sense of protection from a threat that doesn’t exist. As for being a victim, isn’t everyone with a different religion than Islam in a Muslim majority region a persecuted victim? Be it Pakistan, Bangladesh or our own Kashmir? Shouldn’t #TalkToKashmiriHindus be a trend? Or a hashtag for Pakistani Hindu refugees? Why are the genuine problems of Hindus sidelined while Muslim victimhood and fear mongering always manages to get block votes? Shouldn’t the Muslims see through this abhorrent plethora of lies?

If you think you need a hashtag to talk to a Muslim and are not able to see people beyond race, religion and state then you’re part of the problem. Personally, I’d want to be as far away people like you. Indians talk to Indians everyday, irrespective of how they worship what God, without the need of celebs acting victims.