Country Roads...Take me home...

India’s tolerance according to some has reached its boiling point and its heat has woken up the hitherto sleeping conscience of intellectuals, elite and….the opportunists. They are complaining because according to them silent waters have suddenly become troubled waters as the erstwhile veiled bigotry has now turned into a inferno that has set the Nation on fire…and it’s working towards the seizing of growth engine.

Every day we see some significant and more insignificant people giving equally insignificant statements regarding insecurities in India, and the TRP savvy media laps it up like a hungry dog. I wonder, if an alien (certainly not PK) descends on India and gets to see some News Channels he would imagine that in this country everyone is James Bond…with a license to kill. He will never  picture Hindus and Muslims as two communities that have co-existed despite riots and demolitions of religious places for more than 700 years, but he will hypothesize them as two mobs sporting saffron and green colors killing each other in every locality over beef….or over few spots of colourful Gulal. He might contemplate that every restaurant of this country has a bouncer sporting a Tilak and a Talvar monitoring who is eating what. He will think that there are tatoo experts who specialise in inking on the face.

Through this blog I don’t want to take a stand on tolerance or intolerance, instead I would want to state my fear that an artificial atmosphere of fear is being created and that’s too dangerous a situation for our country. I fear that all those who are crying ‘intolerance’ are feeling extremely unsafe and frightened and so much so that they are going overboard to warn the members of their community about their worst fears.

I believe that living under fear seizes your thinking capacity; I also believe that Tagore advocated living at a place where the mind is without fear. All those who say or mean that ‘India is no more a safe country’ deserve to live at a place which is better than India….more safe, more tolerant and more secular, but these poor things must be finding it tough to find one such place in the world. America has been attacked, Europe is experiencing a war like situation, atmosphere in Middle East may not be conducive to their outrageous lifestyles  and I can’t trust Pakistan with people we love so much. So how do we create a safe haven for them?

I suggest that the Government of India takes out a piece of land for the ‘Intolerants’ and name it as ISIS… well, don’t get me wrong, it’s just an acronym for Independent state for Intolerant society. This country can have a Vatican City type of sovereignty where a constitution that suits the residents can be written by the citizens themselves (after all there are so many writers who would be proud citizens of this new country)

Geographically speaking the piece of land most suitable for this kind of arrangement can only come out of Bihar. The recently concluded elections in Bihar have shown that the Government of Bihar has full support of these tortured people and vice versa. This new country ISIS will have these constitutional premises:

10 commandments of ISIS

1. The Indian Government will have no control over the ISIS
2. People visiting ISIS will have to get a visa but the residents of ISIS can roam around freely in India.
3. Saffron will be banned…as in spice and colour.
4. Residents will be allowed to live with their families, one at a time if you have too many
5. Residents of ISIS may not have the requisite experience of governing, so we can have ex-officio Chief Ministers by rotation, leader nominated for this post are Arvind Kejriwal, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad or anyone who fits the requirement…crime or corruption is not a criterion…tolerance is
6. A certificate of Tolerance is must for every citizen, which will be given if you have a) Returned an award b) Have spoken against the growing intolerance on TV c) Have critisised Modi through social media…without a reason
7. All English News Channels will have their headquarters in ISIS…Barkha, Rajdeep and Sagarika and few others will be given palatial bunglows in the capital
8. Narendra Modi will not be allowed to visist this Nation ever….even if no country is left for him to visit
9. Even Rahul Gandhi will not be allowed as he only augments Narendra Modi's image wherever he goes
10. The ISIS will remain into being till the time BJP rules in centre…after which it will automatically cease to exist.

I hope this nation cannot do a better service to this ‘Intolerant’ lot, whom we love(d) so much.