Cyberbullying victim asks what’s wrong in holding Bharat as father

He is all of 18 years old. A student of class XII, he also happens to be Muslim. On Tuesday, he took to Facebook to declare, “I am tired of being called a Katua (a slang referring to someone who is circumcised); I am tired of being called Jinnah Ki Aulad ( Jinnah’s children); I am tired of being asked to move to Pakistan; I am tired of being called an anti-national.”

The teenager explained that while several of his earlier videos were scripted and rehearsed, this time he was speaking extempore because he could no longer take the insults. Admitting that he had posted two videos earlier exposing the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he asks, “Does that make me an anti-national?”

“Who decides if I am a nationalist or an anti-national? Would the court decide this or Modi Bhakts? My mother and my sister are being abused. My entire family is being abused.”

“We need to understand that government and nation are two different things. If I am criticising the government, that doesn’t mean I am criticising the nation,” the teenager, Wali Rahmani, says while declaring, “I was born in this country, I’ll live in this country and make sure that I am buried in the soil of this country.”

In the video—that has gone viral on social media—he asks the following questions:

• Did the Muslims not fight for the freedom of this country?
• Were Muslims not involved in writing the Constitution of this country?
• Just because I don’t say Modi ki Jai, Yogi ki jai and BJP ki jai, do I become an anti-national?
• Where in the Constitution is it written that saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Vande Mataram is mandatory?
• Wasn’t it Savarkar who introduced the concept of Bharat Mata, consider the land as mother and worship it?
• Wasn’t it Savarkar who said that the tricolour would never be the national flag ?
• Isn’t he the same person who said he wouldn’t follow the Constitution of this country?

“I would rather say Bharat Pita ki jai. You want to consider Bharat as mother. I’ll Bharat as father. Why fight over it,” he asks sarcastically.

“If you work for poverty alleviation, promotion of education, then I’ll call you nationalist.”

“I became an admirer of Modi when in a TV interview he said that ‘I want Muslims to have Quran in one hand and computer in another.’ But Modi too has a mask on his face. After appointing Yogi Adityanath—who publicly talks about kidnapping women and murdering people, Modi has proven that he isn’t a secular person. Are you running a country or playing pranks?”