Are we all enemies of the state?

I think its safe to assume that I am no longer a patriotic Indian I have arrived at this conclusion based on what the government of India has spent a lot of time and taxpayers money to prove over the past few years I have come to accept that I agree with almost nothing done by the senile men in Delhi who have been placed in charge of our collective fate I believe they have done everything in their increasingly unchecked power to dismantle everything that once defined India and find it strange that this opinion can now land me in jailIf I were to look at the people who reside in my building today a significant number of them would fall into the category of antinationals simply because governance has given way to an endless witch hunt that has no end in sightIt started with minorities because anyone who isnt part of the majority has always been an easy target in any insecure nation It was predictable too because governments need scapegoats to divert attention from their inefficiencies and failures and minorities have conveniently fit that bill for centuriesThen students started to become a problem They asked questions which in any developed country is a sign of intelligence Here it was turned into an act of war Universities were broken into libraries turned upside down and young men and women jailed because they dared to say what their parents were too afraid to This wasnt a surprise either because governments ruled by people with no intelligence and leaders with fake degrees have always been afraid of those who spend time in real institutes of learningNo one raised eyebrows when Dalits were targeted next because they have been mistreated for as long as India has existed After all we are the people who came up with that inhuman concept of a caste system in the first place And so this too wasnt a surpriseAt the start of the last horrendous year women became the enemy Poor downtrodden exhausted women who dared show their faces in public and ask their government to stop separating families and communities based on religious beliefs Their concerns were valid but women in India are meant to be seen not heard so this was another problem They were promptly belittled and attacked as agents funded by mysterious foreign powersFilm stars didnt escape either especially the ones who didnt show up for PR group photographs They were enemies of the people because a few of them had dared to show support for the other antinationals crawling out of the woodwork They werent supposed to say anything that wasnt scripted nor were they allowed to have opinions that didnt match those of a political party and so they were vilified as morally bankrupt people who should be ignoredActivists were then rounded up and jailed NGOs shut down for dubious reasons and random people jailed across India for daring to put up posts on Facebook or Twitter A controversial law related to sedition has been used more over the past few years than over the past few decades and the threat of jail time is now brandished with the kind of ease that ought to have been reserved for doing businessSpeaking of doing business that is only being reserved for those who toe the line Contribute to the right kind of fund and you can have doors opened for you Forests and airports can then be sold to you for marginal sums while your competitors are shut down under the weight of conveniently placed red tape Say the wrong thing and you can expect calls from all kinds of agencies convinced that you have been defrauding the state This sort of diligence is mysteriously absent when billionaires fly out leaving unpaid loans behind but one cant ask questions about why they were given those loans in the first place because to do that is also antinationalWhat is to be left of India in the coming years I think about that now and again when I hear of another arrest or threat or social media campaign targeting someone for simply daring to stand up and speak If we are all a threat to the idea of India what sort of India will we be living in If politicians accused of murder can walk freely into Parliament while 80yearold activists struggle to get bail is this even a country worth defendingWhen he isnt ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paper