Why I am
About
I was once an anonymous nobody – sitting in my cocoon and running a small business in a quiet area of Kolkata. Nobody knew me. Nobody cared who I was and what I thought. Perhaps my father did, because he was the other one who cared to listen to my endless rants. One day in 2017, I got a call by a man I deeply admired for his wit. My would-be CEO, Rahul Roushan, asked me if I wanted to lead OpIndia.com – a small website which had the temerity to exist – against the media tides. It wasn’t much then. But it was a website where I wrote infrequently because I have always believed that words matter. I knew nothing about digital publishing or journalism. But I so desperately wanted to write. I took up this job believing that it would give me a much needed respite from the mundane, work-a-day career I had. I did not particularly understand money and did not much care for it either. I said yes.
Overnight, I quit the business. I quit because I felt drawn, not to this profession, but to the prospect of writing for a living. OpIndia as a publication grew exponentially. The day I did my first investigative story, I remember sitting in my father’s chamber and watching Republic TV as Kapil Sibal raved and ranted about the story – threatening to sue me. This was the dopamine hit I had been looking for. I felt exhilarated. I felt liberated. It was a strange feeling because as an average middle-class new mother, threats of a lawsuit should have scared me. It didn’t. The only thought in my head was – “I did it”. The lawsuit never came because the story was solid.
From the urge to just write to the proliferating growth of OpIndia, somewhere along the line, I changed. For most of my life and at the beginning of my career with OpIndia, I thought reconciliation was possible. It was hope that drove me then. It is unbridled, unadulterated rage that drives me now. Every dead body, every incident of brutality unleashed against Hindus that I documented drove me further away from “I am sure they will condemn at least this” to “I will only stand for my own”.
Over the years, I have closely followed the sheer brutality with which the Left and Islamist nexus hunted those they don’t agree with - their hate gift wrapped in punch words like “secularism”, “harmony”, “morality”, “truth”, “brotherhood”, “idea of India”, and so much more.
I have documented them giving a political context to the brutal hacking of Hindu activists. I have watched them ensure that Hindus lose their jobs merely for speaking about the Islamic invasions. I have watched them celebrate the death of Hindus and dance on their dead skull.
I have watched them dismiss how Islamists abduct, rape, convert young Hindu girls. Pretend to be Hindus and then convert them to Islam after they’re in too deep. I watched them stay quiet after Hindu girls were brutally dishonored and hacked.
They turned a well-planned killing spree against Hindus into an “anti-Muslim pogrom”. Those of us who documented the truth were hounded, abused, smeared, character assassinated, black listed by publishers. They cropped images of images where weapons could be seen atop mosques.
They weaponized the innocence of Hindus. A Hindu chants Jai Shree Ram because of centuries of unshakable faith. A Hindu puts the sticker of Hanuman on his car because he believes He is the protector. They took that innocent faith and turned it into a marker of “terrorism”.
Hindutva was meant to arm Hinduism to adapt to a world order based on nation states. A concept which for Muslims meant Ummah and for Hindus meant this civilizational state. Hindus gave up their Monarchs to get “secularism” and they needed Hindutva to find their political identity. Hindutva is meant as a shield against those who weaponize the innocence of Hindus and because they needed to weaponize the innocence of Hindus, Hindutva had to be tarnished by the Ummah and the Global Left Conglomerate. I watched it happen. I documented it.
They regularly unleash a Nazi-esque propaganda, globally, where the persecution or beheading of any of us would not draw condemnation, but cheers and celebration. When we are murdered, when we are lynched, when we are beheaded, we will be blamed for it - even by our own Judges.
They have lied for years. Fake Jai Shree Ram crimes. Fake threats. Fake Musalman Khatre Main hai. Fake church crimes. Fake “Hindus raped a nun” (turned out to be Bangladeshis). Fake history. Fake alternate realities. They have lied, cheated, misled, to demonize us. All of us.
They guilt tripped us enough so millions of Hindus shut up, sit down, and don’t celebrate the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict - a battle Hindus won after 500 years of sacrifice. “You will provoke them”, they said. And we. shut. up. Weaponized the innocent of Hindus, as I said.
When journalists who were not blatantly sympathetic to the cause of the Left and/or Islamists were hounded, dragged and arrested, they laughed. When death threats were issued to Hindu women, they justified. When I was hounded out of West Bengal for speaking the truth, they cheered.
I am now driven by rage. Rage that comes with knowing what they are doing. What they have done. What they want to do. The rage that comes from watching and documenting Hindus being beheaded. The rage that comes with them justifying our civilizational demise. I would, ideally, like to be dewy eyed too. To stand for lofty ideals uniformly. Nobody is born with rage. Mine comes from their conduct. Between fairness and survival, I will choose the survival of MY PEOPLE, a people they want wiped out.
When you hold us by the hair and try to drown us repeatedly, you cannot expect us, any of us, me, to stand with a rope to rescue you when you drown in the same pond. You just can’t. That’s not human nature. Retribution the purest emotion.
I have been asked several times why I chose to fight for Hindus and only Hindus when I could have simply feigned neutrality and achieved the success, I can’t possibly achieve being honest about my work. I have been asked to speak for the rights of the very Islamists and Leftists who want me dead. Who want us dead. Who want this civilization wiped out. I won’t. I never have and I never will.
I never will because this higher burden of morality on Hindus will be the death of us. “We are better than them”, I am told repeatedly. I say - We are. But we will certainly be deader than them if we hold on to this moral high ground and sacrifice survival of Hindus because we have this undying need to be morally superior.
We are morally superior because we didn’t start the fire. We didn’t start this cycle of hate and viciousness. We didn’t behead. We didn’t kill. We sacrificed our own so peace could be maintained. Enough. Thus far and no further.
I believe that I exist not because it was my divine destiny to be a journalist, but perhaps, be a conduit in shifting the Overton Window – so what is considered “radical” today by the deracinated, comatose Hindus, is considered a policy tomorrow by those who rule the world.
The Overton Window, simply put, shifts when an acceptable idea becomes popular and then translates to policy. Or better yet, when a radical idea journeys its way through being considered ‘sensible’ to ‘popular’ and then translates into policy.
There are broadly 6 degrees of acceptable of public ideas:
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Unthinkable
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Radical
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Acceptable
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Sensible
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Popular
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Policy
What was unthinkable yesterday, could possibly be a policy tomorrow. The idea that Bharat was a land of Hindu consciousness was an unthinkable proposition a few years ago because of the deracination of the pollical class. Today, it is an acceptable dinner table conversation and perhaps, the CAA even signaled that Bharat was discreetly whispering that the then “unthinkable” idea could possibly be a policy tomorrow.
While there have been signs of hope, there has been a sea of despair. While my soul prays for a revival, every morning, I wake up to documenting our end.