V is for ...Verse... Verily ... n ... Volunteers ...

 

Bohurupe sommukhe chhari kotha khnujichho Ishwar?

Jibe prem kore jei jon shei jon sebichhe Ishwar.

                                                                                      ~ Vivekananda

 

In front (of you) in various forms, why do you leave these to search for the Almighty elsewhere? The one who shows love to all creatures, it is he who serves God.

 

“Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Matthew, 25:40

 

The news out of India has been horrifying and beyond distressing in the last few days. Close friends, family members, friends’ friends and relatives – so many people I know are down with the virus. Kolkata has a positivity rate of 55%, West Bengal, my home state, is at 25% overall, up from 4% at the beginning of the month. I'm sitting here with my heart permanently thudding in my mouth, checking on people frequently, wishing I could tear myself away from the threads and feeds and 24/7 news headlines, yet glued to them. My feeds are choked with private individuals’, activists’ and journalists’ posts sharing helplines and urgent appeals from all over the country, trying to connect corona patients with the medical resources they need. No words for the eye searing images, everybody has seen them - as relentless as the virus.

 

The causes of this catastrophic second wave, this wholly preventable suffering and loss of life, the gross negligence and mismanagement, the sheer incompetence, the mind numbing governmental indifference – I’m not even going there, that’ll explode whatever is left of my brain. It boils down to monumental arrogance and vanity – at the very top sits a clueless megalomaniac and his blind Islamophobic fans who have led India down this path, deaf to all voices of reason, systematically breaking the spine of every democratic institution, curtailing freedoms, ramming bills and laws through, heedless of their relevance to the public good or their public acceptance. But like I said, I don’t want to be talking about this toxic man and this agenda of hate and discrimination.

 

What I want to tell you about is the Parsi community in India. They are originally Zoroastrians from Persia, who migrated to the subcontinent after the Muslim conquest to escape religious persecution. They number 69,000 in India, against a total population of 1.3 billion people, talk about minority! - I mean, it doesn’t even show up as a percentage, they are so minuscule. 

But their contribution to modern India far exceeds their weight in the population. Parsis in India are synonymous with charity and philanthropy, prominent Parsi families have contributed to the building of Bombay in the 18^th century – landmark buildings and institutions in the city still bear their names. The community has produced industrialists such as Jamshetji Tata (called the ‘father of the Indian industry’), Neville and Nusli Wadia, Adi Godrej; prominent politicians of the Indian independence movement such as Pherozeshah Mehta, Dadabhai Nauroji and Bhikaji Cama; nuclear physicist Homi J Bhabha (‘father of the Indian nuclear programme.’)  They’ve given us several distinguished military officers including defence Chiefs of Staff, an Attorney General and a Chief Justice of India, heaps of educators, sportspersons, film and theatre artistes, authors, poets, singers, and professionals in other creative arts.

 

Serum Institute of India is the largest producer of vaccines in the world. It has shot to prominence right now because of the pandemic, but it’s been quietly producing vaccines against polio and measles and such like and supplying them to African and Asian countries for more than half a century now. Unglamorous but essential. It is playing a leading role in the production of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, not just for India but also the world over. Guess who set it up? Yup, a Parsi – Cyrus Poonawala. Godrej is producing the refrigeration equipment, Tata vehicles provide the transportation for the vials, which are again manufactured in a Parsi owned facility.  For an undemanding minority community which is not exactly a vote bank  that's a lot of weight they're pulling. 

But it's not just the Parsis. Elsewhere I read another post which commented on the frequency of Muslim names occurring on the lists of citizen helpline groups in cities all over India. This is despite the toxic Islamophobia of the leaders at the centre which demonised an Islamic gathering as a super spreader event exactly one year ago, yet lets the Kumbha Mela of the Hindus go ahead plonk in the middle of the pandemic. Despite the hatred and discrimination that is the driving force behind laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act. 

In another article journalists share the information that the Sikhs, another minority community, have organised an oxygen 'langar' in a Sikh temple -  a communal oxygen bank where anyone in need can go and hook up to a cylinder. Sikhs are big time volunteers even at normal unpandemic times, their temples or Gurudwaras all invariably run these communal kitchens on a massive scale where anyone, regardless of their faith, can go get a hearty, vegetarian meal.  The holiest Sikh spiritual site, the Harmandir Sahib Golden Temple in Amritsar, runs a langar that feeds 50,000 people on an ordinary day. That can spike to 100,000 during a festival.  The biggest, holiest Hindu temples, on the other hand, do not permit non-Hindus to enter the temple precincts. 

From where I am standing, it looks like the Indian pandemic response, in the total abdication of all central government responsibility, is driven largely by ordinary citizen volunteers. And the minority communities seem to have a disproportionately large share in that effort. For all the vociferous and aggressive chants glorifying Hinduism, it seems to me the minorities, the non-Hindus adhere to Vivekananda's teachings far more closely. 

A-Z Challenge 2021