India's welcome to illegal immigrants
New Delhi, India — Accidentally, I committed a blunder last week. A friend working for our armed forces had sent me a message through e-mail. The message was thought provoking and I decided to share it with my core group of friends. However, while forwarding the message I accidentally hit “all contacts.” The result was that the message was forwarded to all the contacts associated with my e-mail ID.
One of those contacts was a gentleman from Pakistan. His reaction to the message was abusive and unprintable, though the abuse was against India, not me. And surprisingly, he was emboldened to do so because one of my close friends, a senior journalist who hails from Kerala, had sent a really nasty reaction to my forwarded message. My journalist friend was a hero for the Pakistani gentleman.
Now, I must tell the readers what the forwarded message was:
If You Cross The North Korean Border Illegally You Get 12 Years Hard Labor.
If You Cross The Iranian Border Illegally You Are Detained Indefinitely.
If You Cross The Afghan Border Illegally, You Get Shot.
If You Cross The Saudi Arabian Border Illegally You Will Be Jailed.
If You Cross The Chinese Border Illegally You May Never Be Heard Again.
If You Cross The Venezuelan Border Illegally You Will Be Branded A Spy And Your Fate Will Be Sealed.
If You Cross The Cuban Border Illegally You Will Be Thrown Into Political Prison To Rot.
If You Enter Britain Illegally You Will be Arrested, Prosecuted and Sent to Prison and Deported
If You Are a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi and Illegally Cross the Indian Border You Get - A Ration Card, Passport (1 or more), Haz Subsidy, A Drivers License, Voter Identity Card, Job Reservation, Special Privileges, Credit Cards, Subsidized Rent Or A Loan To Buy A House, Free Education, Free Health Care, A Lobbyist in New Delhi, with a ready Television Channel and group of expert human rights activists, The Right to talk about Secularism, which was not heard of back home. And of course - Voting Rights!!
And how did my journalist friend react? Here it is:
"Prakash, we should consider ourselves lucky that at least some people consider it fit to ruin their lives by crossing over to this **** country where 60 percent don’t have food to eat while the one per cent brahmanical class have fashioned little Singapores for themselves, don’t pay taxes, loot the exchequer and live in Lutyens bungalows.
"Incidentally Bangladesh against which your mail is targeted will be a much better off country in one or two years for the poor than India will ever be thanks to our all-consuming brahmanical class and its babus who will never allow the poor undercastes of the country to come up and who think that all that Indians need now is a ID card!"
Of course, my friend’s reaction did not go uncontested. There were quite a few reactions from others. But two of them stood out. One said that my friend did not have any right to criticize since he himself belonged to the so-called “brahmnical class.” Another pointed out that statistically, my friend’s so-called minority community dominated the education and job fronts in states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
I really fail to understand why a certain section of Indians, irrespective of their gender, religion, education and profession, hate India, their own country, so much that outsiders like the Pakistani gentleman, who just cannot tolerate the prospect of a rising, stable and prosperous India, quote them extensively in belittling India.
