Written by: Paresh Malakar
India is no longer the India we once knew. It has quietly become an undeclared Hindu Rashtra. We feel this truth most poignantly during Eid, Muharram, and Christmas. Days before Bakri Eid, rumours and threats begin to circulate.
This year, a friend and I accepted Eid invitations from two Muslim households. In one home, we were served fragrant mutton biryani. In the other, they offered sheera-dahi and an array of sweets. As we were leaving, the head of the family proudly showed us their newly built house. Inside, I saw his three sons eating, but the atmosphere was subdued and heavy.
The joy that should have filled the air was missing. And it wasn’t just that one house — this quiet unease now hangs over the entire country. Festivals, once occasions of celebration, now bring more anxiety than happiness. People simply breathe a sigh of relief if the day passes without any untoward incident.
What have we done to this country? How did our India change so much, right before our eyes?
I often think back to forty years ago, when I was pursuing my M.A. in Philosophy at Gauhati University. I wasn’t staying in the hostel but in a rented room. As exams approached, my friends worried about my lack of focus and arranged for me to stay somewhere more conducive to studying.
Asitda — Asit Baran Chakraborty, who worked at SBI — kindly took me into his home. They lived in a small rented house behind Don Bosco School in Panbazar, along with his brother Sujit, also a banker, and a relative named Batsu, who did private work. It was a warm Bengali family.
After a few months there, my friend Nasimul Majid invited me to his family’s more spacious government bungalow in Narengi, belonging to the Assam State Electricity Board. His father, the renowned filmmaker Abdul Majid, was posted there. One home was Bengali Hindu, the other Muslim. We were the same people, yet there were subtle cultural differences between us — differences that made life richer. That diversity, I believed, was the very essence of our democracy.
I still remember the taste of the egg curry Asitda’s family cooked on Sundays. At Nasim’s house, a neighbour once asked his mother in surprise, “We only knew of your three sons — Nasim, Kaju, and Bhaiti. When did you get another one?” I had blended in so completely that I felt like a genuine member of the family. After years of careless wandering, it was in their home that I first began eating meals on time. It was also there, after a bath one day, that I first noticed healthy hints of fat on my body. The colour, aroma, and taste of their chicken and goat curries remain unforgettable to this day.
Later, when I moved across India for work — from east to west, north to south — I witnessed the incredible diversity of our land. In Kolkata, I could tell from the aroma of a meal alone whether the household was from East Bengal or West Bengal. Our clothes, cuisine, music, crafts, and art all spoke of a living, breathing civilisation shaped by thousands of years of exchange. It is not that conflicts never occurred, yet a shared cultural stream continued to flow. In many places, religion and culture had beautifully merged.
But now, in the name of Hindutva, that hard-earned unity in diversity is being deliberately undermined. Division has become the new mantra. The British sowed the first seeds with the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Today, it feels as if the BJP is watering those very seeds.
The comparison may seem stretched, but look at what happened after the creation of Israel, backed by Great Britain and the United States. The Middle East has known little peace since, and Gaza stands as a tragic witness. Similarly, the Partition of India left deep scars across the subcontinent. Dividing people has always been a convenient tool for those who wish to rule or exploit.
As our economic troubles deepen — rising fuel prices and soaring inflation — the noise of Hindu-Muslim conflict only grows louder. While urging us to be frugal, they continue to beat the drums of division. Perhaps I am oversimplifying things. But isn’t this, more or less, the reality we are living through? What has happened to our dear country?