Saffron Fury

Saffron Fury
The nature is often just like a little child, who, in her angelic grace and beauty, sleeps so calm and serene, allowing the people around her to move away and engage in their own work or business. At times the nature becomes just like the same child who is awake, hungry and angry, playing tantrums and not allowing the people around her to do anything else other than cradling and cajoling her. Once unleashed, nature’s fury is beyond man’s capacity to assess and tame.
This year has witnessed unprecedented nature’s fury all over the world, especially in the forms of hurricane and deluge, be it in America, Africa, China or India. When Kosi river changed its course, it turned out to be the sorrow of Bihar, which is witnessing its worst flood in living memory with several of its districts under water and rendering about 15 lakh people homeless. Assam has been ravaged by flood for the third time since June when the mighty Brahmaputra river let loose its fury and displaced 13 lakh people there.
In spite of gloom and anxiety, death and destruction, the affected people of nature’s fury are hopeful of a homecoming and picking up the thread of life once again with whatever resources are at their disposal. The curse of Kosi or Brahmaputra has not washed away the confidence and optimism in them; neither are they holding anger or revenge towards the nature which rendered them homeless and helpless. While the adults in the flood relief camps are worried about their belongings left behind in the houses, kids ask for books, not biscuits. Two women who gave birth to baby girls in the camps look lovingly at Kosi and one of them even named her child ‘Kosi Kumari’. Help and support from governments and people are flowing to the people.
Just like the nature, human beings become too furious at times that no one is able to understand the reason or contain the aftermath effects of that fury. We have witnessed such human fury years back in Mumbai and Gujarat, and last month in Orissa. The common thing in Mumbai, Gujarat and Orissa is that all of it has the same colour – saffron fury – and that all of it are well planned, so brutal and inhuman, and of course, something that people of sanity would never dare to do. When nature’s fury doesn’t discriminate, saffron fury is directed towards a particular section of the people alone, as it is Christians in Orissa. The victims of saffron fury are no more confident or optimistic, and they have neither home coming nor any thread left to spin their life again. For the acknowledged crime of Maoists, when the champions of Hindutva unleash terror on the innocent Christians, burning them alive, burning their homes and places of worship, gang raping sanyasins or nuns, denying the Constitutional rights and violating human dignity, then we realise that there is another kind of terrorism at our door step, nay, right inside our home, and let me call it rightly ‘Hindu Terrorism’, just the way our politicians and media use ‘Islamic Terrorism’.
If you ask me ‘what is the difference between ‘Hindu Terrorism’ and ‘Islamic Terrorism’, my answer would be that the difference is only in the first word while ‘Terrorism’ is common and hence no difference. Can there be any difference between the ‘Islamic Terrorists’ who burn down a temple and rape Hindu women in Kashmir and ‘Hindu Terrorists’ who burn down churches and rape nuns in Orissa? For me, anyone who terrorises the innocent people in the name of faith or ideology is a terrorist, no matter he is a Hindu, Muslim or Christian, and no matter he uses AK 47s, bombs or tridents. And, my love for them is as sincere as my love for Stalin, Hitler and Bin Laden. I love and respect every peace loving and law abiding Hindu, but not the ‘Hindu Terrorists’.
At the time of nature’s fury we Indians suffer together and are united as never before. But, at the time of saffron fury, only Christians suffer and ‘Indians’ are no where to be seen. When the Christians close down their educational institutions for a day to protest against the ‘Hindu Terrorism’, the ‘Indians’ want them to be opened, and closed down only when they demand so. If a Christian school takes disciplinary actions against the students for performing Ganesh Pooja right in the class room, and the Hindus attack that school, forcibly close it down and threaten the management to take back the students, I call it a form of ‘Hindu Terrorism’. What else should I call when someone flying a saffron flag on a cross atop a church? Nature’s fury, even in its severest form, is nothing compared to the saffron fury in its mildest form. And the whole water in Kosi or Brahmaputra is not enough to wash away the saffron fury. Be prepared.
(the writer can be reached: jacobkani@gmail.com)