Minority appeasement has long been pursued as a de-facto state policy for decades in India, more so in Tamizh Nadu with a lot of vigour and brazenness. This has frequently put the majority Hindus in a bind and made them feel inferior on many occasions.
The recent incidents are only reinforcing this.
As the Chinese Corona Virus pandemic started spreading in India, Tamizh Nadu was perceived to be under control and managing the situation well, till the Tablighi Jamaatis returned from Delhi during March.
In addition to being ‘super spreaders’, the arrogance with which the Tablighi Jamaatis insulted and threatened the health officials when they approached them for testing and treatment had shocked the conscience of the common public. The incidents that followed in Chennai (Royapuram and Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar) as well as in Madurai, Dindigul and Tiruppur, where the Muslim community people forcefully broke the isolation barricades kept by the police and even went to the extent of manhandling the police officials had rubbed salt on the wound of the citizens, who were willingly following government instructions of lockdown and physical distancing for the common good.
As if this was not enough, a group of 300 Muslims started offering prayers in the middle of a busy road in Madurai on May 22 , in utter defiance of the prevailing lock-down instructions and also posing a threat to others by giving room for the virus to spread.
While these are incidents relating to the upmanship of one minority community (Muslims), the audacity of the other minority community (Christians) in giving police complaint against installing a statute of Bharat Mata in Pulliyur Village of Kanyakumari District on May 23 came as a rude shock to the common public.
In the Issaski Amman temple situated in a private land, the owners have installed the statue of Bharat Mata in their premises and started worshipping Her along with the other villagers. However, all of a sudden the DSP ordered his officers to ‘cover the statue’, as the presence of the Bharat Mata statue is hurting the ‘religious sentiments’ of the Christian community. The police cited the complaint filed by the local Christian missionaries against worshipping the statue. This has created a lot of furore, not only with the villagers, but has irked the Hindus across the country.
As a result of the protests by Hindu organizations along with the local villagers and also considering the backlash in the electronic media as well as social media, the police had to finally rescind their action. The District Collector ordered the cops to ‘uncover’ the Bharat Mata statue and restored status-quo ante.
While this issue appears to be ‘resolved’ now, the undercurrent is still live – that is the arrogance of one minority community in openly defying the government instructions of lockdown during a medical emergency situation and another minority community daring to give a police complaint against installation of statue of Bharat Mata in a part of Bharat.
It would be in the best interest of maintaining the communal harmony and peace in the society, the State government instructs all its agencies and officials to act in an impartial and genuine manner in future. Will the state government do ?