“Why raise anti-Pakistan slogans in Muslim dominated areas - are they Pakistanis?” asked Bareilly district magistrate Raghvendra Vikram Singh in a Facebook post he must have since grown to regret.Ī police officer, however, confessed on the condition of anonymity that Singh had a point when he said people should celebrate national festivals without getting aggressive. Some see it as a means to alienate the Muslim community.
There has been a sudden spurt in Tiranga Yatras in the communally sensitive West UP region. “We are defiling the sacrifices made by thousands of freedom fighters by clashing over it.” Members of the minority community feel indignant about having to prove their nationalist credentials every time Hindutva activists demand it. “The Tricolor lives in our hearts,” he said. But mixing slogans of ‘Vande Mataram’ with ‘Jai Shri Ram’ can disrupt communal harmony, as witnessed in the state.Īshfaq, a relative of freedom fighter Ashfaqullah Khan, is a sad man. Patriotism has now replaced religion as a unifying force, with a need to bring the majority community together as its underlying motive. “Change happens gradually, and creates ripples when moving from wrong to the right direction,” he said. However, even Tandon found himself at pains to justify the Kasganj violence on Republic Day, when Hindus and Muslims clashed in the aftermath of a Tiranga Yatra. Tiranga Yatras can revive the fading spirit of patriotism.”
Today, Tandon bemoans how the spirit of patriotism has lost itself in a new definition of secularism. “Whenever a freedom fighter from our neighborhood went to jail, we would all - irrespective of caste or community - bid him farewell by singing patriotic songs with the Tricolor in our hands,” the politician recalled. India was still struggling under the British back then. Kasganj, UP: Senior BJP leader Lalji Tandon’s most distinct childhood memory is of the times they took out ‘prabhat pheris’ with patriotic songs such as ‘Uth jaag musafir, bhor bhai’ and ‘Vijayi vishwa tiranga pyara, jhanda uncha rahe hamara’.
A bus set on fire by a group of people who went on a rampage after cremation of a young man killed on Friday during the Tiranga bike rally, in Kasganj on Saturday.
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