Because After all, we chose love

If you come as raiders,

Riding the beasts of battle,

Armed with chants of ‘holy war’,

And creating a rattle;

We will open our arms

And place you in our bosom,

For the god who taught us love

Has forbidden hatred to blossom.

 

 

If you come with gore in your eyes

Armed with scimitars and spears,

Defiling and sacking our holy shrines

And doing these years after years,

We will defy your barbaric assault

And rebuild them with our lever;

Every time loftier than before,

Every time holier than ever.

 

If you preach one god one faith

Like a fanatic iconoclast;

If you decree dishonor and death,

For who do not believe you at last;

We will fervently teach

All roads lead to the same truth,

All streams of various origins

Finally meet the bountiful routh.

 

When you were busy scheming

Plunders defying the Magna Carta,

Spreading your sacred bloodbath,

From Arab to the ‘Aryavarta’;

We were busy giving

Zero to the whole world,

Calculating the value of pi

Ayurveda was unfurled.

 

If you ransack our varsities

Torching our religious books,

Causing sacrilege to our deities,

With intrigue in your looks;

We will place the ‘Nalanda’

In all our hearts forever;

We will see God in everything,

Inanimate or alive – whatever.

 

If you convert by the sword,

Spreading terror and death;

If you call me a ‘Dhimmi’

And strangulate my breath;

You will only hurt the man,

The soul within will not shove;

We will remain Hindus forever,

Because After all, we chose love.