India has always been a land of unity in diversity with people from different cultural background, faiths and religious practices coexisting harmoniously.
This has come under threat because of the politics of hate being actively propagated by politicians to extract electoral mileage. The country today remains severely divided along the lines of religion and caste.
As politicians desperately push their hate agenda, there are simply too many citizens, who remain resolute to thwart this hideous design to divide the society. A post on a conversation between a mother and her little child celebrating India’s multicultural ethos has now gone truly viral.
According to the post, originally published on Facebook by one Meghna Athwani, a mother was travelling in a carshare with two other passengers, one of them being a Muslim with a skull cap. Driven by curiosity, the child reportedly asked her mother, “Why is this uncle wearing a cap in the evening? There is no sun outside!” The mother came up with a beautiful reply. She told the little child, “Have you not seen me covering my head with a dupatta , whenever i visit the temple ? Or when some elder guests come to our house? Or when i have to touch the feet of your grandparents? It is sign of respect or to pay our regards my child.”
The girl, the post said, wasn’t convinced and continued with her probing questions further. She asked innocently, “But who is this bhaiya paying respect to? There is no temple here. He is not touching the feet of anyone. Neither is anyone so big in age sitting in this car. So , who is he trying to give his regards to?”
The mother too was ready with an even more incredible reply. She said, “His parents have taught him to respect everyone he meets and to pay them his regards. Just like i teach you to say Namaste to guests.”
The post goes on to say that no one was ready for this reply ‘not even the Muslim guy himself’ who had stopped his conversation with the driver to listen to this beautiful Q&A session between the mother and her child.
Meghna says that she got off the car as she reached her destination, smiling and thinking, ‘If this is what the common man thinks about people around him..If this is what people are actually teaching their children, If this is how today’s generation wants their children to learn.. Then our politicians are failing at dividing us. All the orthodox idiots are failing in disturbing the secular fabric of this nation.’
Meghna’s original post was shared little over 700 times, but it went viral after a Facebook user Vinu Mathew reproduced the same content on his page. Vinu posted the content on 17 July and it has already been shared nearly, 26,000 times with 56,000 users liking the post at the time of writing this piece.
Hope this heartwarming story reinforces our faith in the age-old Indian values of unity in diversity.