When I was a kid, India to me meant waking up to a Masjid's Azan, smiling at the early temple worshippers as I passed them by, and fearlessly praying a Christian prayer in my school. Back then, India for me meant marveling at the architecture of every place of worship with no malice. It meant reading legends of Ram, Krishna, Guru Gobind, Jesus and the prophets with equal awe and excitement. In fact, it didn't feel weird reading Mahabharata for three continuous library classes because I LIKED the story. Back then, it didn't even feel weird to ask my fellow schoolmates about their religion.

One night, I remember seeing tears in my mum's eyes as she left her friend's group after they shared some vile messages. I remember feeling that I would never have to go through such heartbreak for my friends will forever keep their heads above religion, cultures, and beliefs. Now, as a seventeen-year-old (yes, not even eighteen, not even 'mature', but then which one of us are?), I feel those thoughts to be nothing but "MITHYA."

As I grew this very society took my heart and dissolved it in the murky acid of politics and hate until all that remained as my identity was my religion. Not Country, but religion.

I know many of you reading would either curse and call me 'a leftist Muslim talking against the ideologies of right' or praise and call me 'a true leftist.' BUT I AM NEITHER! I AM JUST A YOUNG INDIAN KID FOR HEAVENS SAKE! Hell, I dont even know what means right-wing and what means left! All I understand is the meaning of right and wrong.

Maybe it's so because I live in a Muslim community with a church at its entrance, and a temple close at hand; maybe it's because I lived alongside the residents of Nepal House who celebrated festivities of all religion with the same vigor, or maybe it is so because I grew up feeling proud of my country for all the people and culture it hosted.

Whatever may be the reason, I am thankful for it because now I see myself as the son of this soil before I see myself as the son of my religion. And as a son of BHARAT MATA/MA/AMMA/AAI/ETC., I demand the sanity of my motherland, I demand her peace back, I demand my positivity back, I demand my constitution back, my friends back, my family back!

And if you can't give them back to me, dear leaders, you don't deserve to stand on the pedestal and lead my country,  you don't deserve to put your dirty hands on my constitution, you don't deserve to swear by it. You Don't. Deserve. Anything.