These Are Difficult Times

These are difficult times. As an ordinary, faceless citizen if you want to voice your concern about Islamic fanaticism, particularly in response to what is going in the neighbouring country to our east, you are liable to be labeled as anti secularist, right wing fanatic. To be branded what one is not is the most terrible misfortune that can befall someone. In a public debate a trick that is very successfully employed by many to win an argument against an opponent is to stereotype the opponent. Once that is done a section of the audience automatically turns your supporter and if that section happens to be the majority (or more noisy) then the debate from that point on is as good as won.

It is quite possible that you might have noticed this in your day to day life, in the office, the social circle, within the family and so on. When someone has been branded as a joker in his circle, whatever he does or says will never be taken seriously. Even when he is raving and ranting and going mad over something his deeds will not be seen as an act of protest or an honest expression of ones opinion.

I have talked to large number people, all of them without as exceptionally ordinary as myself, and found them equally worried about the rise of fundamentalists (and consequent violence) in Bangladesh, but no one speaks out about it primarily for the fear of getting typecast. What happens to India when Iran turns nuclear? As a friend said, the danger was not as much as that of going into war or something with India, the real danger lay in the unstable social and political environment in that part of the globe. Therefore India considers it to be necessary in her own interest to disable Iran’s nuclear program and yet, the country is being branded as a lackey of you know who.