I n March this year, two Hindu sisters from Agra disappeared. What initially appeared to be a routine missing persons case soon unravelled into something far deeper, darker, and disturbingly modern. The girls, one a PhD scholar and the younger sister only 18 years old, were tracked down in Kolkata. The UP Police’s Mission Asmita, kicked into gear and cracked this case, and revealed an alarming conversion operation which spans multiple states with international links.
Mission Asmita is a strategic campaign initiated by the Yogi Adityanath government to target syndicates that prey on vulnerable Hindu girls and take them down the path of radicalisation. Deepali/Amina was so far down the path that she posted a photograph with an AK 47 rifle on her social media and when questioned about it allegedly said that this “is work for religion”. This is not fiction. This is India in 2025. But how did we get here?
An educated young woman, pursuing her Masters in Zoology and her 19-yearold sister from an average middle class Hindu family, are not the first people who come to mind when thinking of such situations. They lack the financial need and instability to be lured by such syndicates. But that is only a surface level analysis of the situation and the answer may have been provided to us already by the devastated father of the two girls as he tearfully warns other parents to inculcate the right dharmic values in their children.
The average middle class vision is to ensure that children are armed with the necessary skills of education to ensure that they are secure for life, with no great inheritance to pass on, this is a value that parents feel will stand the test of time and take them through the highs and lows of life. Middle class daughters are just as actively persuaded to become professionally qualified as boys, so they may have the option to live a life of dignity and independence. In this the parents did no wrong—Deepali/ Amina, was studying at a coaching centre when she met Samina and became fast friends with her.
Samina would visit the home and was a pleasant girl, who was religious minded. The parents didn’t mind, the Hindu way of respect for all religions was deeply embedded, even when Samina suggested that Deepali’s mother should convert, her mother was mildly amused not alarmed. The young are often enthusiastic and think they have all the answers. But little did she realise that this was not a passing comment, this thought was already taking root in her older daughter’s mind. And this is why it’s important to note that this is not a tale about religion, although that is the backdrop, but it is one about the faltering values even in well-meaning people which create such situations and how we as a society need to combat those from within before it’s too late.
We live in a world that prioritises image and success, relationships are becoming increasingly transient, with mobility and career demands. In this column we have discussed the rising rates of divorce earlier. There is an overall lack of stability and as the world becomes a smaller place via the internet, a drift away from our cultural roots and more importantly our civilizational identity and values. The younger generation is seeking and when Hindu society believes that only openness is the right way to raise children in 2025, we are creating a generation of cultural orphans. Those who are exposed to the world, but not rooted in their own identity. Young people may rebel against being told what to do but they also crave structure, often structure is mistaken for rules—deadlines to return home, no boyfriend/ girlfriend, study timings etc.
These are superficial impositions, real structure comes from within and from an understanding of our cultural values as Hindus. Here we have failed and continue to, hence cases like the Agra one. And it is ironical because we are the one intellectual, philosophical, religious system which has always had an inner structure, and it is called Dharma. Dharma which has no parallel word in English is uniquely Hindu. And Dharma has always provided this internal structure. When a child is inculcate with dharmic values not through ritual but as a way of being, their inner clarity becomes the compass that leads their life to true success.
The values of sewa, sankalp, swabhimaan and shraddha are armours that protect one from the superficiality of Instagrammable living and poisonous ideologies. But we have systematically ignored this potent aspect of our culture, we have prioritised Shakespeare over the Bhagavad Gita. We will discuss climate change but not discuss Prakriti or Panchabhuta. All this to appear modern. As a result, we have a generation of vulnerable cultural orphans, ready and willing to be manipulated. Hindus do not need to match radicalism with radicalism, there is no necessity to do that, we belong to a tradition that has survived thousands of years. What we have to do is become the active custodians of our values and dharma.
Previous generations have been custodians in far more trying times, of slavery and colonisation. Now as a free people we have the duty to preserve our dharma-based identity. When a Deepali becomes Amina and is so radicalised that she cannot stand idols and the Hindu rituals she was raised in, we get a sense of how facile our imparting of dharma has become. But it is already too late in many ways. We must appreciate timely interventions like Mission Asmita to keep our girls safe. And also acknowledge on a deeper level that the real safety lesson begins at home, and it is an age-old lesson, one of the inner armours called dharma.
Advaita Kala is author and screenwriter.
