The Creeping Israelification of the Hindu Mind |
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In his 2009 book, The Caged Phoenix – Can India Fly? Dipankar Gupta, the highly respected sociologist, had observed, with brutal professionalism:
“For the ordinary Indian who comes from the majority community of Hindus, what happens to Muslims periodically is of no great interest. During the killings the Hindus may become very Hindu, but that does not sustain them over a long period. Even as their Hindu sensibilities are sharpened an overwhelming majority would not step out to kill Muslims but would look kindly upon those who do so under state support.”
“For the ordinary Indian who comes from the majority community of Hindus, what happens to Muslims periodically is of no great interest. During the killings the Hindus may become very Hindu, but that does not sustain them over a long period. Even as their Hindu sensibilities are sharpened an overwhelming majority would not step out to kill Muslims but would look kindly upon those who do so under state support.”
Now, pray, do read a page-six story in The Indian Express (Delhi edition, dated July 2, 2026), and, ponder how since 2009 our “Hindu sensibilities” have not only been sharpened but have been weaponised, and, how we have come to feel good about this sense of communal violence.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
The IE story is simple, a tale of everyday occurrences in hundreds of streets and towns across India – a car grazed by a biker or an auto-rickshaw, and a few heated words between two drivers, maybe even a scuffle, and then two antagonists go their respective ways. But it acquires a different hue when the dispute may be between a Hindu........