In the latest exhibition of secularism, a bakery owner has been arrested in Chennai for a WhatsApp advertisement message allegedly circulated by him that says “Made by Jains on orders, no Muslim staffs”.

Prasanth, 32, owner of T. Nagar-based Jain Bakeries and Confectioneries, was arrested by the Mambalam police on Saturday on the charge of ‘outraging religious feelings’. The police took this action suo motu, i.e. without any formal complaint lodged by anyone.

Prasanth was charged under IPC Sections 295A (Deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion) and 504 (Whoever intentionally insults, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace).

Owner of Jain Bakeries & Confectioneries, Chennai, arrested for this advertisement. Booked under Sections 295A & 504 of IPC. pic.twitter.com/SMBlrmJOMu

— D Suresh Kumar (@dsureshkumar) May 9, 2020

The owner of the bakery is currently out on bail. The advertisement was circulated by the owner on WhatsApp groups for people belonging to Jain communities, to take orders, as per the police.

Seeing the alacrity with which the police took suo motu action in this case, many compared it to the disgracefully slothful police (in)action in the case of two minor Hindu girl childs, abducted by a Muslim trafficker from West Bengal in one case and missing from Badohi, UP in the other.

Both girls were retrieved months later only after NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) got involved and/or the cases were raised by non-MSM media outlets like Swarajya and Hindus on social media.

Jains are a true minority in Bharat. They form just 0.37% of the population, and as they are neither involved in proselytisation or over-breeding, their proportion of the population remains the same.

Yet, a mere ad in which the bakery owner just mentions that he only employs Jains and not Muslims in preparing his bakery products was enough to get him arrested. Note – the ad doesn’t say that Muslims are not employed in delivery, accounts and other operations of the bakery. And police themselves have stated the ad was being circulated in closed WhatsApp groups for Jain community members only.

How the secular state rationalises this arrest while approving the halal meat industry where Muslims alone can be involved in the entire meat production chain, is anyone’s guess.

This incident again proves that even within the 6 so-called ‘national minorities’ – Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists – it is the first two Abrahamic faiths that call the shots, the first among equals so to speak. The majority (read Hindus) have anyway been so badly divided along regional, language and caste/feudal lines that they don’t even realize the institutionalized discrimination they face. In fact, there is now a rush amongst certain Hindu communities to attain the coveted minority status, such demands being ably abetted by the secular, ‘Idea of India’ mafia!

All this is happening in a country where it is not difficult to find employment ads in ‘secular’ states like Kerala that exclude Hindus. For eg., an ad that appeared in 2014 in a Malayalam daily inviting applications for various jobs in a supermarket only from Christian and Muslim candidates, elicited only mild criticism from one political party. Tax-payer funded ‘minority’ colleges like St. Stephen’s openly give preference to Christian candidates for teaching positions. The Kerala government even has an entire department dedicated to the ‘welfare’ of people who have left Hindu Dharma and converted to Christianity!

It is also important to note that just recently, a TikTok video had gone viral showing a Muslim man slicing loaves of bread in a bakery and spitting on them. Maharashtra police arrested Abdul Nazim Sheikh Mahmood along with a minor, after a complaint was lodged by Abdul Salam, the owner of the bakery in Amravati. In April, fruit vendor Chand Mohammed was caught on CCTV while spitting on fruits before selling in Bharatpur, Rajasthan. In another case, an FIR was lodged against 3 Muslim fruit vendors in Meerut, UP for spitting on fruits before selling them.

Sayyad Jameel Sayyad Babu was arrested in Malegaon for uploading a TikTok video in which he is seen licking currency notes and wiping his nose with it while claiming the novel coronavirus was “Allah’s punishment”. A maulvi in West Bengal delivered a sermon hoping ’50 crore Hindus would die of coronavirus’ as the crowd cheered. Islamists have flooded TikTok with videos claiming observant Muslims are immune to Coronavirus, social distancing is irreligious and dropping veiled threats to non-Muslims about the pandemic being “Allah’s NRC.” Similar thoughts were expressed in March by Muslim crowds protesting CAA.

The incidents of Tablighi Jamaat members misbehaving with nurses & doctors, and the routine attacks on health-workers & police in Muslim-dominated areas across the country are just too many to recount; even the closet-Islamist left-liberal ‘fact checkers’ like Alt News have almost given up on denying those as fabricated. An AIMIM supporter and a Muslim MLA from Assam have both spread rumours that Coronavirus is a conspiracy to eliminate or sterilize Muslims – the AIMIM chap even threatened a genocide of all Hindus ‘when the time comes’.

Yet, despite such shocking behaviour coming to light, the secular state has made highlighting & criticising these incidents and acting in self-interest an even bigger crime. Poor Hindu fruit vendors are being intimidated and arrested for putting up saffron flags or using the word ‘Hindu’ in their shop name; a man was arrested in Mumbai for refusing delivery from an unhygienic Muslim delivery boy who had come from a hotspot zone; a doctor was arrested in Aurangabad for calling the underground Tablighi chief a ‘terrorist’; another Hindu was arrested in Vadodra for calling the Tablighi congregation in Nizamuddin ‘terrorist’; and now a Jain bakery owner has been arrested for informing his customers that he doesn’t employ Muslims in food preparation.

The message from the secular state to Hindus and other Dharmics/Indics is clear – unless we start legal activism on a mass scale and come out on the streets to demand Constitutional reform, we will be discriminated against with contempt.

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