A derogatory statement from India has recently come into spotlight in the international media as a hot potato of the world ,and Nupur Sharma, BJP Parliament member of India, claimed on her tweet that the context was during TV debate Mahadev, Hindu deity, was being disrespected and insulted. In that context, she responded using derogatory statement. Each party uses religious sentiments at the end of the day to win in the debate.
This was not serious until few countries in middle east raise the concern and asked for boycott of Indian products. There are two consequences that we need to take into consideration. The first is economy and the second is racism.
Obviously as a whole it will have impact on the economy of India in general. Let's analyze the stakeholders who will be victimized by banning of Indian products. Apart from Hindu, there are Muslims, Sikhs, Buddha, Christian, Jews and so many other religious groups of people who are involved with businesses outside of India.
According to one internet source, "India's arable land area of 159.7 million hectares (394.6 million acres) is the second largest in the world. Its gross irrigated crop area of 82.6 million hectares (215.6 million acres) is the largest in the world."
General people of India cultivate crops and send the materials to different countries. At the end of the day all these stakeholders need to suffer the problem and they had no involvement whatsoever over the statement. Obviously, Indian government is trying to take initiative already since they got international pressure over the issue.
Then, the racism issue would always raise upon general workers who are not much concerned about this kind of issue at all. Workers are mostly concerned with how to keep their family happy and debt free. That's all they think about. They are no way involved with national politics or no time to watch this kind of discussion. Out of nowhere they would face racism for what they do not have any idea.
The dirty politics using religion is still ongoing in 21st century. A 15-year English medium school boy from a Hindu aristocrat family once said to me "This religion is just cultural garbage which I do not believe". The problem is that there are 1000 religions in the world and everyone claims to have monopoly of truth and as we learned from science and reason, the credibility of these religious beliefs is not out of the topic. BJP members have tendency to use religious sentiments for last few decades. Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee straightforward told in media that "If it happened in Bengal, I would put her in jail". The issue is very clear. Stop doing politics by the name of religion and young generation do understand the tricks used by these politicians. E.g. Donald Trump, who took oath putting hand on Bible, is promoting white supremacy and he is taking into consideration the national interest first over humanity. These politicians know well that the religions they hold has no monopoly of truth to certain extent as they have read religious scriptures as well as equipped with contemporary secular materialistic knowledge. Despite they use the religion just to hold into power because using religious sentiments it is easy to convince and make fool to mass people. Mass people only asks question of the credibility of these leaders when they get clear evidence of corruption. Otherwise, they do not bother with politics apart from election time. Obviously Indian ordinary people do understand these political agendas, yet they are just silent and try to avoid the issue since this is long time heritage of dirty politics. How do we solve the problem of politics by the name of religion then?
In fact, this problem needs to be solved by upcoming younger generation because we can no longer put our trust to these old hypocrites' leaders who time and again use religion into politics. We need society based on truth, humanity, reasoning and science. Sadhguru recently gave the hint,
Only if the younger generation does things that the parents never imagined possible, can a society evolve.
~ Guest Writer: Md Maruf Hasan
PhD candidate, Department of Usul al-Din and Comparative Religion, International Islamic University Malaysia
E-mail: marufenglish021 at gmail dot com