Citizens, armed forces veterans write to President, PM Modi on hate speech / Aditi Mittal: Deafening silence in a year of hate speech
Five former chiefs of the armed forces and a number of other prominent citizens including bureaucrats have written a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the recent incidents of hate speeches and urged them to take appropriate measures. In a letter, the group of over 100 people also referred to the communal comments made at an event in Haridwar recently and condemned “in no uncertain terms” such “incitement” to violence.
“We cannot allow such
incitement to violence together with public expressions of hate – which not
only constitute serious breaches of internal security but which could also tear
apart the social fabric of our nation,” they said in the letter.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/hate-speech-india-veterans-pm-modi-president-kovind-7700817/
Aditi Mittal: Deafening silence in a year of hate speech
2021 was a year of
speech – free speech, hate speech, funny speech — and a year of silence. I grew
up during India’s Mile sur mera tumhara era. My grandparents were all too
familiar with the horrors of Partition and they often spoke of the riots that
followed — about neighbours who told on each other to rioters and about
identifying family members in piles of bodies. They talked of “divide and
rule”, an insidious British policy that was meant to keep us fighting among
ourselves so that we would not pay attention to the poor state of affairs in
which we were living. They recounted how years of poisoning the minds of people
against each other had exploded as a bomb, the shrapnel of which flew around us
for years and the wounds from which took decades to heal.
In the refugee colony
of Mumbai where they ended up, they promised themselves they would never live
in a world where we dehumanised one another. The British might have forsaken
us, but we would not forsake each other, they insisted. They would never
passively watch their country burn. Never again. In the India they chose to
live in, we constantly flooded into every neighbourhood house with vessels full
of food to celebrate festivals, offer condolences, and watch out for each other
in need….
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