When Faith Becomes Fury: Why Normalizing Extremism Undermines Dharma and Democracy
When Faith Becomes Fury: Why
Normalizing Extremism Undermines Dharma and Democracy
When a lawyer hurled a shoe at
Chief Justice B.R. Gavai inside the Supreme Court of India, it wasn’t just a
moment of disruption it was a glaring sign of how far we’ve fallen in
normalizing extremist behavior. And yet, not one institution, media outlet, or
political leader has asked the most obvious question: Is this man mentally
stable?
Let me say what others won’t:
This is not just dissent. It is delusion. And we, as a society, are failing to
call it out for what it is a mental health issue dressed up in the language of
religious outrage and cultural pride.
We’re told this lawyer acted in
defense of Sanatan Dharma. That this was some sort of sacred resistance.
Let’s be clear: That is a lie. There is nothing “Sanatan” about throwing a shoe
at a judge. There is nothing noble, spiritual, or justified about attacking
someone whose job is to interpret and protect the Constitution. These actions
are not rooted in faith they are rooted in unchecked entitlement, violent
fantasy, and psychological instability. And yet, instead of treatment or
consequences, we’re seeing praise. The media glorifies him. Politicians stay
silent. YouTubers turn him into a hero.
What makes this more dangerous is
the clear pattern of criminal behavior emerging from the same ideological space
and being ignored.
A Dalit IPS officer in Haryana
dies by suicide after being repeatedly humiliated and blocked from justice. He
left names. Documents. Evidence. Still, no outrage. No headlines. No
accountability. In Bareilly, a Dalit man was lynched by a self-proclaimed “Yogi
Army” thugs who believed their faith gave them license to murder. Where is the
national soul-searching over that?
If the same actions were
committed by minorities, Dalits, or marginalized groups, we’d hear cries of
“law and order” and “anti-nationalism.” But when it's upper-caste, privileged
fanatics, the system goes quiet or worse, makes excuses.
What kind of future are we
building where people act out violent fantasies in the name of gods, and we nod
along because it's “cultural”? How long before this madness moves from shoes to
bullets?
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop
dressing delusion as devotion, or hatred as heroism. This is a mental health
crisis, and those who cannot distinguish between myth and law, fantasy and
governance, have no place holding public office or influencing discourse.
If someone in the West attacked a
judge while ranting about Superman as a god, we’d call it what it is a
psychiatric emergency. But in India, when someone acts violently in defense of
a fictionalized, extremist version of Sanatan, we call it “faith”? No. This is
not faith. This is dysfunction. It’s time we stop enabling delusions just
because they wear the clothes of tradition or chant slogans loud enough.
These individuals need to be
evaluated, disqualified, and possibly institutionalized not paraded around as
defenders of the culture. Because when we overlook this behavior, we are not
protecting our heritage we are poisoning our future.
Who is benefiting from allowing
unstable minds to dominate public discourse? What crimes are we overlooking
because they’re wrapped in a saffron flag? How long before this unchecked
privilege and ideological rot turns fatal again?
Faith is not the problem. Mental
instability is. And if we want a civilized society, it’s time we start treating
it like one. Not with excuses. Not with forgiveness. But with boundaries,
accountability, and diagnosis.
Because today it’s a shoe.
Tomorrow, it might be something we can’t walk away from.
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