Mohandas Pai: The Real Emergency Is To Free India From The Clutches Of Self-Styled Vigilantes

There is an urgent need to stop India from being branded intolerant over isolated incidents happening in the country, says Mohandas Pai in an article to the DNA.

A news channel gets a mere rap on the knuckle for repeatedly violating the code of conduct and jeopardising the country’s interests, but the self-styled vigilantes are raising a hue and cry that media freedom is under threat and that the country is facing an emergency-like situation.

“The real urgency we are faced with is the need to reclaim the narrative from a mythical intolerance,” he says.

“Some Indians have a habit of exaggerating events and broad-brushing their opinions across the nation.”

Stray incidents happening in a country as large and diverse as India are now part of a “grand narrative” that brands all the 127 crore Indians as religiously intolerant and communal with the country projected as authoritarian and ruled by tyrants, “with civil liberties at peril”.

When a crime is committed somewhere in India, all Indians have to face the charges of a few people “who have arrogated to themselves, without popular support, to speak for all of us”.