I never thought a day will come when Iwould say this, but it has, and I am say-ing it: I no longer get a dopamine highfrom the non-stop Hindu-Muslim blahblah. To tell you the truth, it’s gettingtiresome. Please don’t think I am beingungrateful or anything — I am not. I amnot only a proud Hindu but also an ex-cessively grateful one.

For the record, let me tell you that Iam more grateful than you have everbeen for the achhe din that you and Iare enjoying today. I am even moregrateful that, for once, it is not the mi-norities that my beautiful governmentis appeasing. I can never forget thatHindus comprise barely 80% of India’spopulation, while a whopping 14.2% ofall Indians are Muslims. If you are aHindu, you have to be a total idiot notto feel threatened by the fact that Hin-dus outnumber Muslims only by a fac-tor of 5.7 is to 1.

The need to hateWhat if, starting from tomorrow, In-dia’s 966 million Hindus abruptly stopprocreating and India’s 172 millionMuslims (men and women both) pro-duce six children per capita before the2019 elections? It means the Muslimpopulation could overtake the Hindupopulation by as early as July nextyear. Logically speaking, the only wayto stop this from happening is for all ofus to continuously keep blathering onabout Hindu-Muslim stuff��, to keep for-warding fake news on WhataApp, andto somehow keep the fl��ame of commu-nal hatred burning in our hearts.

After all, what is left in life if therearen’t other people to hate? Personal-ly, I hate nothing more than to see oth-

er people happy. I especially hate tosee any Hindu-Muslim couple beinghappy — it reminds me of my own un-happy youth, which was a total wash-out, romantically speaking. This is alsowhy I support love jihad and condemnValentine’s Day, a colonial custom thatencourages Indians to adopt foreignculture like love before marriage.

I know I am treading on sensitiveground here. In India we don’t tolerateany Hindu-Muslim talk from anyoneunless that person is either a bigotednews anchor or a bigoted politician.Sadly, I have a long way to go before Ican lay claim to being either. Ofcourse, it is not easy to do what ournews channels do every evening, and Iwant to place on record my gratitudeto our prime time anchors for consis-tently speaking hateful lies to thegrateful powerless, which takes asmuch courage as declaring a non-exis-tent university an Institute of Emi-nence. Besides courage, it also takesresourcefulness, for as Samuel Butlerfamously said, “Any fool can tell thetruth but only an Indian fool can spotthe most talented liars and elect themto power.”

Rahul Gandhi’s misstepSo, let me come to the point: it waswith great anguish that I read in thepapers that Congress president RahulGandhi had met with some Muslim in-tellectuals. This is not only ridiculousand anti-national but also deeply of-fensive to my own sensibility as aproud Hindu. If Mr. Gandhi had sud-

denly felt an irrepressible urge to meetintellectuals, there are any number ofHindu intellectuals that he could havemet. He could have met Chetan, one ofthe world’s foremost intellectuals andan author of several bestsellers withsuperb intellectual content. Or hecould have met Sambit, another intel-lectual giant from the Hindu commun-ity. If he didn’t like either of them, hestill had plenty of choice, ranging fromAnupam and Mohandas to Vivek, Mad-hu, and Chacha Chaudhary.

Instead, Mr. Gandhi met with abunch of intellectuals whose contribu-tion to Hindutva is almost zero. Onecan barely imagine what they dis-cussed during their interaction. Hope-fully they didn’t talk about unemploy-ment, inequality, destruction ofinstitutions, and other suchnon-issues.

As any public intellectual worth hispaymaster will tell you, the real issuesfacing the country today are not jobs,roads, hospitals, schools, and farmerdistress but why Mr. Gandhi keeps tra-velling abroad at a time when thecountry is in desperate need of goodgovernance. In these diffi��cult times,when even the Maldives and Sey-chelles are thumbing their noses at us,and India is taking dictation in foreignpolicy from the U.S. and China, it is im-perative that Mr. Gandhi is held ac-countable for his poor fashion sense.

At one level, it’s hardly surprisingthat a politician who doesn’t dress ele-gantly and doesn’t even have the gutsto publicly play multiple musical in-struments will want to meet Muslim in-tellectuals. But who will take responsi-bility if, like Mr. Gandhi, every otherHindu politician starts talking to Mus-lim intellectuals? What next — Hinduintellectuals talking to Muslim politi-cians? At this rate, we may never getaround to rewriting the Constitution.So my humble request to all of you:stop wasting your time on Hindu-Mus-lim stuff�� and instead, start celebratingyour unborn child’s lucrative campusplacement at Jio Institute.

All this Hindu-Muslim stuff�� At this rate, we may never get around to rewriting the Constitution

G. Sampath is Social Aff��airs Editor, The Hindu

GETT

Y IM

AGES

/ IS

TOCK