Reality Bites: I want to live in a free nation again

I wasn’t born when India won Independence. I was just one of those privileged Indians who took freedom for granted, and I expected to die in a free country too. I was, however, aware that there was an organisation made up of fat old sickos who worshipped the Nazis, wept into their hankies when the British were kicked out of India, spread rumours and lies like gossipy old aunties, and thought communal riots were a lovely way to pass the day.

My father had warned me about these ghouls when I was little. You see, these fat old sickos used to lurk around kiddy parks when Dad was a teenager in pre-independence India. Such a shame that British plods on duty didn’t holler “Hoy!” and drag the fat old sickos to police stations on the grounds of evil intent.

My father was approached by a couple of fat old sickos when he was playing cricket one evening. They tried to recruit him to their bigoted cause, but he firmly turned them down. I am so proud that he could tell right from wrong when he was in his early teens, unlike so many old editor uncles & aunties, public intellectuals, and businessmen who brought these fat old sickos and their party, the BJP, into power in 2014 and kept them there.

It’s India’s 75th Independence anniversary this year (also known as diamond anniversary). Considering that the BJP has been extorting money in the name of PM CARES fund, and got the lion’s share of electoral bonds again (over 75%, amounting to Rs 2,555 crore) the least it could do is give us a diamond each, but then the selfish things only think of themselves. They won’t even give us diamond-shaped kaju barfis!

While I always look forward to Independence Day, my enthusiasm is flagging. Democracy is in grave danger. Consider this: the BJP refused to allow over 60 percent of our elected representatives to air our concerns over Pegasus spyware, unpopular farm laws, the crumbling economy, etc in Parliament this monsoon session. As for Covid, you know, I know, and even foreign embassies in Delhi know that the BJP doesn’t care. Why, even BJP party members asked the Congress for help during the second wave!

Freedom of religion is under threat too. The fat old sickos have got their “boys” on the streets of India’s capital urging people to kill fellow Indians because they are Muslims. Their bullies are out and about almost everywhere in India beating or lynching Muslims as weeping children look on and the shameless cops look away. Why, they allegedly assaulted members of the Opposition in Parliament too! However, these fat old sickos won’t use their lathis on Chinese insurgents because they are insecure cowards who only pick on people smaller than them.

What does Independence Day mean to citizens who are allowed no independence at all? The BJP want to control what we eat, watch, read, write, say and do. They are even inside our phones watching us, listening to us, looking at our messages and getting turned on by our photographs, thanks to spyware.

Earlier, the BJP had ordered the mainstream media to stop airing Opposition voices, now they’ve got social media doing it too. Twitter has locked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s account for sharing photographs of himself with parents of a little Dalit girl who was raped and murdered in Delhi. The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights asked Twitter to delete the tweet. Oddly enough, as The Telegraph pointed out, tweets by former BJP MP Anju Bala, a member of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, and a tweet from the commission itself with images of the parents did not receive a similar response from the child rights panel or from Twitter. While Twitter hid all these tweets it did not lock out Bala and the Scheduled Castes panel.

It’s clear that the BJP has ordered Twitter to lock and block Congress handles, and it’s only a matter of time before Twitter’s cute blue bird is replaced with a picture of a fat old sicko with a bushy white beard. No, not Santa Claus, but Fanta Clod.

Let’s not wait for the100th anniversary of India’s independence to throw the fat old sickos out. I want to live in a free nation again!