It reflects the religious screaming about "religious freedom" only to the secular while not allowing even a thought about it when it comes to any other religion.
This is a fairly stupid headline. There are laws which require Muslims to prove their heritage and that they are legally residents, and no one else. There's police brutality against Muslims and their homes are destroyed. High ranking leaders talk about how Muslims are like rats and roaches spreading disease and requiring extermination. These leaders are part of Modi's Hindu nationalist party.
The incident in this article doesn't reflect an "increasingly polarized India", it presents an extremely polarized India. Fascists are using the government to spread nationalism and religious zealotry, and persecute Muslims.
"Bus conductor fired after disrupting services by halting off designated stops" should be the headline.
Are they really supposed to allow abruptly halting public services for the whims of two passengers now? What the fuck is the department supposed to do, delay the buses and just ask the working passengers with time commitments to fuck off every time someone in the bus wants to pray?
This story is shite and the editors should be ashamed of making it a religion issue.
The bus department's decision was correct and not even remotely related to religion.
Looking it up - Kaushambi to Bareilly, the route the bus was on, is a 5 hour drive. We're not talking about city buses with 2 minutes between each stop. Long distance routes like that generally give the driver the discretion to decide where and when to stop for toilet breaks, etc. Nobody is going to object to a break of a few minutes.
In other words, this would have been a perfectly normal rest break if not for the religious aspect. So no, the editors are not wrong.
Mohit, who was a conductor in UP Roadways was suspended earlier this year, for allegedly halting a Delhi-bound bus for two passengers to offer Namaz. The UPSRTC staff and his co-driver, a contractual staff, were suspended on June 5 for halting ‘Janrath’, an air-conditioned bus headed to Kaushambi from Bareilly.
I mean, should abruptly halting public services for the whims of two passengers be tolerated really? What the fuck is the department supposed to do, delay the buses and just ask the working passengers with time commitments to fuck off every time someone in the bus wants to pray?
It reflects on the increasing-polarization of ALL HUMANKIND.
Read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast & Slow", & recognize that Kahneman System-2, considered-reasoning, is being blotted-out by Kahneman System-1, animal reaction, and that this is exactly how #ClimatePunctuation, which is still accelerating, combines with regional-crop-failures, megadroughts, megaflooding, region-scouring wildfire, political-tantrum, religious-tantrum, corruption, etc, to blot out survival-viability, when a world-species crosses the threshold of the multiple-industrial-revolutions.
This is The Great Filter, setting-up.
Rampagins reaction, enforcing its lashing-out with all weapons available, is exactly what is becoming normaller & normaller, in all regions, in all political-stripes, in all religions.
There will be no considered-reasoning ruling this world before the end of this century, unless a significant portion of this planet's population grow TF up, with all we got, quick.
Moneyarchy is pushing to eradictate Kahneman System-2, because considered-reasoning competes against moneyarchy's preference for humankind to be managed steers, being consumed by the money-machine, without interference.
Legalism's been pushing against considered-reasoning since before the Christian New Testament.
Etc.
See it for what it is: our unconsciousmind is trying to beat, and BREAK considered-reasoning from interfering with it, and "politics" is just makup hiding the underlying-appearance.
So is "religion".
So is "culture".
Notice that Kahneman tells us, outright, System-1 operates in the addiction/prejudice mode of WYSIATI, or What You See Is All There Is.
NO considering context is TOLERATED by System-1.
And that is how The Great Filter silences worlds which reach the cascades-of-technology-development that we're in.
Ignorance uses the weapons to beat/break whole-world-life, in order to PROVE that unconscious-ignorance was the exclusive "lord", and it NEVER had to learn,
and the people weren't up to breaking that unconscious-ignorance.
Same as an addict/junkie whose unconsciousmind, their System-1, would rather break their entire life, than tolerate growing-up/breaking-addiction... and they die.
Worlds do it.
We're in the century that will see .. nearly-nobody survive, if any do.
IF you see it in Hindus, THEN I guarantee you it can also be seen in every other religous-group in this planet, this century, this decade.
There is nothing unique about it happening "here" or "there".
Unconscious-ignorance-addiction, and its prejudice against considered-reasoning/System-1, is taking-over.