We mounted the stairs of the tranquil 200-year-old Noorani mosque in West Bengal’s coal city of Asansol with trepidation. What could you say to a man who had just lost his 16-year-old son to a hate mob that would give him any kind of solace?
For some weeks, India’s glittering hub of information technology, industry and finance near Delhi was shrouded in fear and animosity.
Never in any of his election speeches did Rahul Gandhi use the M word – Muslim. He did not touch once upon the gruesome massacre of 2002 under the watch of Modi.
Amidst the clamour for retribution, we must listen carefully to the gentle voices that talk of forgiveness and compassion. These alone light the way to locate, deep within ourselves, our own capacities for goodness.
Photographs of the young man adorned several large posters. They showed him with gelled spiked hair, colourful shirts, dark glasses, ear studs, teasing laughter and loads of attitude. This collage of his pictures was surrounded by the symbols of various religions.
The Mahatma would have approved! On Sunday, a humid midsummer evening in a claustrophobically narrow lane in the West Delhi suburb of Raghubir Nagar, I often felt his presence among us.
We began this New Year with a journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat into Bengal. Few parts of India are untouched by the swirling tides of hate, therefore we had resolved to take our Karwan to at least one state every month, visiting the homes of families hit by acts of hate violence.
On February 28, 15 years would have passed since a gale of violence engulfed 20 out of the 25 districts of Gujarat. This persisted for several weeks, and in some places for months, as state authorities did little to control it.
Some events leave a permanent mark on the history of a people. For many in my generation, one such moment of iconic suffering was the felling by a frenzied mob of a medieval mosque on December 6, 1992.
Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das. Jharkhand will not be the first government to pass an anti-conversion law if this is voted for by the state assembly. Anti-conversion laws were passed in Orissa in 1967, in Madhya Pradesh in 1968, in Gujarat in 2003 and Chhattisgarh in 2006.