On the Independence Day address to nation, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan communalised Kashmir issue and equated the RSS with Nazis. Former Goa Congress leader and editor-in-chief of Goa Chronicle, Savio Rodrigues wrote an open letter to Pakistani Prime Minister shutting him up and said how as a Christian in India, another religious minority, he lives without any fear.
His open letter which was first published on Goa Chronicle has been republished here verbatim with his permission.
I have no respect for your intelligence or your position as Prime Minister of Pakistan. But I do respect your cricketing skills, I grew up watching.
Being a leader on a cricket field is not the same as being a leader of a nation.
I have no respect for your political acumen because in my analysis of you as a politician, you don’t have the aptitude or right attitude to be a leader of a nation. That you are elected by your people raises serious questions of the mental prowess of the people of your nation.
Without beating around the bush, let me get straight to the moot point of me writing you an open letter.
In your tweet on August 14, 2019 at 5.50 PM, you stated, “This is the RSS ideology that threatens not just Kashmiris or Pakistan or even just Indian Muslims, Christians & Dalits but India itself as envisaged by its Founding Fathers.”
In this tweet you shared an article – ‘Hitler’s Hindus – The rise and rise of India’s Nazi-loving nationalists’.
I am an Indian. I am also a Christian.
I live in India without fear.
I travel across most parts of India on my reporting assignments without fear.
I have two daughters, who have grown up in India without fear and live without fear.
I have a mother, father and wife who live in India without fear.
As a Christian and more so as an Indian, I have never felt threatened or intimidated by what you term to be RSS ideology in my nation.
I am not a RSS-member.
I have many friends in the RSS like I do in most social organisations irrespective of religion or social linkages.
I have studied about the RSS in my learnings about my country. I have found them to be a social service organisation with India and the people of India at its heart.
I have also found some RSS members that I have interacted with, to be exemplary citizens and human beings.
This boogey that foreign political leaders like you Imran try to spew about RSS or about the Hindutva ideology exposes your lack of understanding of the cultural roots of India and the true secularism of India that goes beyond creed, caste and socio-economic status. This is because to every Indian – India is our motherland and it is our Dharma to protect her and her children.
I do not expect you as a Pakistani to understand or have an emotional attachment to the idea of a motherland; that’s because your land was a gift from our Motherland, which our Founding Fathers gave willingly for the Muslims who wanted a land of their own.
You got the gift of land from Mother India but your Founding Fathers could not keep the Muslim people together. Therefore you divided from Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
I foresee an inevitable eventuality that Pakistan will further divide into more nations in the years to come. And this is because within your Pakistani souls, you do not have a feeling for the concept of a Motherland.
I believe today is also remembered as the Balochistan Solidarity Day and the fight for a Free Baloch. This is a part of your Pakistan right now but not for long.
You talk about Christians being threatened in India. I can confidently tell you the Indians who follow the Christian faith live in the arms of their #BharatMata. This is our mother and no child is ever threatened by her mother.
I know, however, that the Christians in Pakistan cannot be truly free. They are constantly under threat because you are an Islamic Nation and not a secular-Hindu nation.
I can only imagine the fear and harassment Asia Bibi and her family went through on account of a false blasphemy case. This is the behaviour of the Islamic fanatics in your nation and you could not even protect her. She had to leave her land and migrate to another country.
You could not even protect the young Muslim man Mashal Khan, who was brutally killed in a University in Pakistan over a blasphemy issue. The eyes in those Pakistanis that bludgeoned the poor man were pure evil. Evil that feeds on fanaticism.
So please don’t lecture an Indian-Christian about India and his safety in his own Motherland.
I understand that the assertive and aggressive decision taken by my government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Article 370 has caught you and your military by surprise; and more importantly you can feel Kashmir slipping out of your hand; that however, does not give you the right to indulge in childish fear-mongering about the welfare of the people of my country.
It is my humble advice that you spend time looking after affairs of your crumbling and incompetent nation.
Christian are safe, Muslims are safe and Dalits are safe. You must not spend too much time getting feedback from the leaders of Congress in India; I say this because you both seem to be parroting the same script on Kashmir and the revoking of Article 370. Their performance in the recent Lok Sabha 2019 elections should tell you that they have no idea about the mood of the people of India and they are on a downward spiral into an abyss from where there is no return.
Let me also be blunt to tell you that we will expose every Pakistani in an Indian garb in our country.
I know whatever I am writing to you, will fall on deaf ears, because like I said initially that you neither have the aptitude or attitude to be a political leader of a nation but I needed to set the record straight with you as an Indian-Christian.
Don’t ever drag an Indian-Christian into your false propaganda. You don’t know our love for #BharatMata.
Jai Hind!
Jai Shri Ram!
Praise Be to God!
