By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
Mayukh Ranjan Ghosh is Republic Bangla news channel’s lead anchor, known for his hyper-physical and ultra-vocal antics in the studio that trigger anxiety, hatred and comic relief, among other emotions. On his April 24 evening show, Ghosh asked everyone identifying themselves as secular to leave India immediately. Pumped up like an adrenaline-rushed challenger in the boxing ring, shouting at the top of his voice, breathing bloodthirsty fire with his mouth, eyes, nose and body movements, Ghosh demanded that the word ‘secular’ must be struck out of the Indian Constitution.
“Secularism! Damn! What for?” he thundered. There is no place for secularism in India, he declared. He gestured at tearing secularism apart. India was never secular he claimed; former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi forcefully made India secular by inserting the word in the Constitution during the Emergency. Now, secularism must go. Secular Hindus are enemies of the nation; the enemies within. The war against secularism is no less—if not more—important than the war against terror, he contended.
One cannot expect correct facts from such propaganda programmes. However, for the sake of our readers, here is the right fact: the Supreme Court has upheld the inclusion of ‘secular’ in the Constitution, arguing that the Constitution has always been secular, even if the explicit term had not been used in it before 1976. But a million verbal salvos targeting India’s seculars came from the Hindu nationalist propaganda ecosystem on social media and the mainstream media in the aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in Kashmir, where suspected Pakistan-backed terrorists selectively killed 25 Hindu male tourists and a Muslim man who refused to let the Hindus die. Instead of showing collective contempt for terror, the aftermath of the tragedy stands witness to an outburst of hatred targeting seculars and liberals.
Social Media’s Hate Engine After Pahalgam
In the wee hours of April 25, pro-Hindutva ‘security analyst’ Rakesh Krishnan Simha posted a photo card on the social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), which read: “Muslims are born in Muslim homes. Christians are born in Christian Homes. Unfortunately, thick-skulled ‘seculars’ are born only in Hindu homes.” In less than twelve hours, it was shared over 1,300 times.
A Hindu nationalist X user going by the name Shivanya wrote, “India can never do an Israel. Israel is surrounded by enemies. India is filled with enemies.” Apart from most of the over 4,000 users who shared the post, many of the comments reflect agreement with her, specifying that India faced a great internal threat from secular Hindus. Many social media users echoed that “secular Hindus should be punished as they are the main culprits.” Varun Bahl, who has over 21,000 ‘followers’ on X, wrote, “The biggest problem in Bharat is the Sickular Hindus. They are out to destroy us.”
The word ‘secular’ had long become ‘sickular’, implying illness, and liberals became ‘libtard’, representing a person of questionable parentage, during the past decade’s Hindu nationalist wave that has swept most parts of India. The Hindu nationalists presumably hold them as the wall shielding India’s minorities, especially Muslims, whom they find responsible for almost every bad thing that has happened to India.
This story was originally published in outlookindia.com. Read the full story here.
