The Country is presently witnessing a lot of Right wing activism which is a root cause of polarization. Take the case of the Aligarh Muslim University which was stormed recently and a former Vice President ridiculed, without any provocation. This has led to an immediate polarization and ironically, there is now a lot of "targeted" outrage against students of AMU who merely shouted slogans in protest against the outright hooliganism.
No independent or neutral observer will say the AMU students have done anything wrong in shouting slogans and there's nothing anti national about it. Members of "Hindu Yuva Mahini" had no business to storm into their University and create disturbances there. It is they who need to be condemned and not the AMU students. This so called "nationalist" agenda of trying to use extra constitutional methods to promote a particular kind of ideology or right-wing politics is actually turning out to be the root cause of division and is sowing the seeds of a divided India. The Yogi Government must focus on giving his people good governance and must not keep resorting to diversionary and divisive tactics like these every now and then. Jinnah was conferred with Life membership of the University and his portrait is hung there since 1938. What's the big deal about it. It's part of India's history & heritage which cannot be erased. So many portraits, statues, memorials and monuments are there of the British, Portuguese, Mughals and so many other rulers. Should we start demolishing them one by one? What kind of skewed logic is this and where are we heading? One wonders how members of this group could muster the courage to storm a University with guns in a State which only a short time ago wanted us to believe how they had brought even the most hardened criminals down to their knees through their "encounter policies"? Does it not show collusion of the State & Police with them? In Afghanistan the heritage "Buddha Bamiyan Statues" were demolished which brought world wide condemnation. India is a much more vibrant democracy and should not tread along this path. Such hard-line thought processes cannot be allowed to be the norm in India and need to be nipped in the bud. Intolerance needs to be universally condemned and should in no way be tolerated. Mark Twain had once called India "the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great-grandmother of tradition". Let us keep it this way. - regards, Sandeep Heble