Former British PM Winston Churchill Churchill said these words on June 18, 1940 just after Adolf Hitler's armies had conquered Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and France in quick succession and in the fight for Europe, Britain stood alone against the Nazis. But perhaps, strangely enough, the words now echo strongest in the India of today – a country caught in a bloody war for supremacy between it's storied past and a promising future. Any forward-looking idea now seems to now face opposition from the ancient glorious culture that made up our past; and any attempt to break away from the past calls for harsh words and if that doesn't work, then violence. From language to clothes, the flash points are many and for all the economic dynamism that India prides itself on – there are enough incidents that shock the living daylights out of any sane individual.

Clothes

We love to define what clothes are ‘culturally’ acceptable and those that are not. Jeans can be a problem, as can skirts. Veteran BJP Leader Babu Lal Gaur had this to say: “Rape is a social crime which depends on men and women. Sometimes it is right, sometimes it is wrong. Until there is a complaint, nothing can happen. Unless the person wants, no one can dare touch her. The item numbers in films create a bad environment. Also foreign culture is not good for India. Women in foreign countries wear jeans and t-shirts, dance with other men and even drink liquor, but that is their culture. It is good for them, but not for India, where only our traditions and culture are OK. Let women consider what is good and bad for them.”

Classic and unfortunately real as well. To make matters worse, many Indians (from politicians to senior civil servants) think in precisely the same manner.

Beef row

What we can eat and we cannot is decided by a culture that is unclear. We worship the cow, so how can we eat it? That and this thesis laid out by MS Golwalkar, the most prominent ideologue of the RSS in 1966 show just how this all began: “It began with the coming of the foreign invaders to our country. In order to reduce the population to slavery, they thought that the best method to be adopted was to stamp out every vestige of self-respect in Hindus. They took to various types of barbarism such as conversions, demolishing our temples and mutts. In that line cow slaughter also began.”

For many years, people have eaten what they have wanted to eat and no one had a problem but now suddenly, we have been introduced to a brand of beef politics that we could have well done without.

Hindu nation belief

In the months after Modi’s victory, leaders of hardline Hindu groups launched a drive to have India officially declared a nation of Hindus. They also stepped up a campaign against what they called "Love Jihad" – a term used to describe what they claimed was an Islamist strategy to convert Hindu women through seduction, marriage and money. And they began a push to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, through a purification ritual called “ghar wapsi”, or “homecoming”, a concept central to the RSS since its founding. Whatever happened to the whole melting pot of cultures that India was really known for.

Right to offence

Some beliefs hold more value than others simply because we find a way to link them to our culture. The intolerance debate isn’t new; what is new, however, is the way in which we take offence to these incidents. The mobs hand out justice in a zeal driven by religion and culture and they take no prisoners. Almost everything we do now has to adhere more to the norms of culture than anything else and in case, we can’t then there is a mob to force us into doing exactly that.