Minority

I have grown up with this term..lingual minority, religious minority, sexual minority.. It is a deadening term , with consequences far reaching. I was born in a state where i belonged to the lingual minority and it took a while to realise , the language we spoke at home was unutterable outside. I adapted to the local language, gradually took a liking for it...but this minority feeling always struck from behind. Soon i was aware of other minorities as  well..religious minority being the most prominent. The term scared me out of my wits...culture, religion, lifestyle everything becomes a part of our being...but being termed as a ' minority' on the basis of religion or language...is natural i guess or the law of the land. An atheist part of me though can appreciate the concept based on language to some extent.. but.the majority minority based on religion.... is beyond my comprehension i guess...i know believers will disagree vehemently...but most of the times religion creates more shackles then freedom.

Sex based minority is also very common in our country. With a shameful sex ratio this is not really a surprise and the best part there is hardly anyone who can relate to this minority... even the fairer sex as we are called.. we are used to having men run our lives and quite comfortable under the security cover the man provides and who looks for liberation ! The discrepancy is evident as in the number of women in the workplace more so as one goes up in the  corporate hierarchy. And the great sacrifice fables of the women who gave it up all for family and kid!!  

Growing up in a place where i belonged to the local minority, i treasured the books written in my language and the wide range of literature and gradually as i moved to a bigger city i still continued to be minority, more so because my fish eating habits, gulping sweets with tea, not fasting in the mandatory rituals performed here and other Bengali tit bits were continuous under scan till i became a full fledged minority. Even when we go to Kolkata, the hub of  Bengalis... no one really speaks the dialect we do and it attracts more sarcasm and humour than anywhere else!! So much for the uprooted minorities... struggling, adjusting, surviving. And the religious minorities... i think that is the deadliest of all, being alleged as the cause of all things unpleasant..how does one live with it.. they get more strong as a minority and fight for their rights.

This is a complex land.. the country i live in...and there would be majority and minority even as we go global netizens and this would dictate the verdict in democracy more than education, medicines, roads , transports , a receding economy and myriad problems facing the country. Governments would form and collapse and minorities would survive... find their own ways.