It started with a public call 

Snap off India’s neck like a chicken they said

**** Hindutva they said

Because Hindutva was not their religion

Then they stabbed young Ankit Sharma till they couldn’t stab anymore

And they threw Ankit Sharma in the gutter

Because he was not from their religion 

Then they left young Dilbar Negi in a fire 

With chopped off limbs so he couldn’t escape

Because he was not from their religion

They spat and stoned and killed police officers who were only trying to help

The police officers were not from their religion

Then they fed two pleading sadhus to a lynch mob like a piece of meat to hungry hounds

The sadhus were not from their religion.

And they claimed they were Indians and ‘kisi baap ka thode hai Hindustan’. 

But Hindustan was not in their religion.

Then Sushant Singh Rajput’s mysterious death opened the can of worms 

Labelled Bollywood.

And the rot stank of proselytising religion.

And deceitful film heroes and heroines just did not seem watchable any more.

Then a young girl was killed by her husband and his accomplice because she wouldn’t convert.

She was beheaded, like another headless girl packed in a suitcase.

Because she was not from their religion.

And a young boy was killed by his girlfriend’s family

Because he was not from their religion.

And soon after they made a glamorous corporate advertisement on the beauty of such inter faith marriages.

Marriages into their religion.

And they dressed up an honour killing to look like a casteist gender crime

As if caste and gender were not in their religion 

They have been trying for a very long time 

To embarrass and shame and manipulate 

Their way into colonising an ancient people

Colonising with their religions.

It has always been easy to shame a self critical introspective people

Who, unlike proselytising religions are ready to submit to principles of equality and justice

Principles called dharma

It is that same principle of dharma

That has started this, India Today

This outrage-a-day as you call it

It is the reclamation of the lost identity of an ancient people

Who have been appropriated and abused, for too much and for too long.

Stop religious proselytism in any form

It is not cool any more

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