Skip to main content

All the Best, Kejriwal



Politics has been nothing more than an entertainment for me.  When the entertainment crossed the most stretched limits of human sensitivity, I wrote blogs to soothe the ruptures within me.  The more I watched the political dramas in my country, the more I began to find it detestable rather than entertaining.   That’s when I chose to stop writing about politics and look at humanity from literary perspectives. 

I don’t know whether my choice was an escapist act.  Even Narendra Modi’s acquittal by the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate would not have prompted me to write a political commentary now.  What has prompted this blog is a question raised by someone with a pseudonym.  He seems to have taken the trouble to follow my blog using Google+ only to raise the question, what do I think of AAP’s coming to power in Delhi?  Similar questions have been raised by a few pseudonymous persons in the recent past and I ignored them.  Perhaps it’s time to tell them that I am bored, utterly bored of Indian politics.

Look at Mr Modi’s latest blog with the heading Satyameva Jayate: Truth Alone Triumphs.  “The law of nature is that Truth alone triumphs – Satyameva Jayate. Our judiciary having spoken, I felt it important to share my inner thoughts and feelings with the nation at large.”  Thus begins the blog addressed to “My dear sisters and brothers.” 

Can I take that as a joke anymore?  I can’t.  I think Mr Modi is perpetrating the most violent assault on truth.  He goes on to say, “I was shaken to the core. ‘Grief’, ‘Sadness’, ‘Misery’, ‘Pain’, ‘Anguish’, ‘Agony’ – mere words could not capture the absolute emptiness one felt on witnessing such inhumanity.” [Emphasis in the original]

Mere words.  Their hollowness echoes beyond the Himalayas.  I find myself wishing that the echoes set an avalanche in motion. 

Arvind Kejriwal is setting up government in Delhi.  I voted for his party and am happy to see it taking charge.  But I’m not a naïve optimist.  I know the kind of rivals that AAP has to grapple with, particularly because the Party lacks majority. 

AAP made a mountain of promises in its election manifesto.  Will the party be allowed to deliver them? 

What will be Kejriwal’s strategy (astute as he is) in dealing with stark wickedness that masquerades itself beneath heart-rending sentiments?  Mr Modi’s latest blog is an indicator of the strategic change that he (though not necessarily his party) is experimenting with.  Will Kejriwal rise above such experiments and be able to implement the policies he visualised?


I hope Kejriwal will deal effectively and efficiently with such challenges which are far more formidable than those of poverty and corruption.  


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Lot of expectations from him now, certainly he needs wishes :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll speak in unison when it comes to Indian politics..Let's see how Kejriwal deals with all these leaders who beg for votes and after winning suffer from amnesia..I wish him luck..:-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He won't suffer from amnesia, I'm sure. But whether his tactics will be better than those of the others - that's the question. Politics is Chanakya tantra. Idealism is out of place.

      Delete
  3. I can understand your disillusionment with our political class.But yes, Kejriwal needs all our best wishes. After all it is after his coming that all other parties have been forced to change their stance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you, Rajeev. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I hope Kejriwal won't be the absolutist...

      Delete
  4. Kejriwal is a leftist. In a while the vagaries of a street movement will begin to show. He is riding high on popular discontent but in a nation where the fault-lines are as apparent as ours, he'll soon be forced to take a stand on issues ranging from reservation to uniform civil code. The day the people realize his Marxist tendencies he'll be chucked out of his office.

    As far as Mr Modi is concerned, his critics will stop at nothing short of hanging him. It seems though the facts of the case drawn from a magazine run by a serial sexual assaulter has more weight than the whole of Indian judiciary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sid, your prejudices are too glaring even in a brief comment like this.

      What if Kejriwal is a leftist? There are many countries in Latin America where Marxist govts have been doing eminently well, at least not any worse than other govts. The problem is not with ideologies, but with those who implement them.

      R B Sreekumar is not a serial sexual assaulter. He was ADGP in the Gujarat capital when Modi played Nero in 2002. Sreekumar has written a series of articles and also an autobiographical work in all of which he has given the details of how Modi presided over the massacres. He also gave evidence to SIT which chose to ignore such evidences. Modi is the typical example of how the large insects escape the fine cobweb of the Law.

      Delete
  5. i really hope his vision is implemented into reality. there will be lot of challenges and our wishes r with Mr Kejirwal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If he is really going to deliver, it will be a revolutionary change in Indian politics.

      Delete
  6. He sure has brought in freshness and interest and some sort of a trust into politics. Will he be able to sustain and fulfill the expectations I don't know but wish him all the best.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It won't be easy for him, Athena. But I keep my fingers crossed. We needed a change and Kejriwal has no alternative as of now.

      Delete
  7. Politics is a dirty word for me as well; its not because good politicians and statesmen are not needed for a nation but because they are not there. A politician should know peoples' pulse; he should be a leader and hot simply a power man. Any creature can be enthroned into a power position in India. All most all current politicians in India in the ruling or opposition are covered by this definition.

    Under such a circumstance, expecting miracle from Kejariwal is not what is needed. People should be the watchdogs of their ruling system; there should be open free communication between the ruled and the ruling. (Please do not compare this with the Chandy janasamparka in Kerala. He and his entourages are impersonating the old feudal set up of Kerala. If you bent your back and cry before him he will say, 'OK,that is done' which would have been easily done by the bureaucrats in his offices to whom his government is paying profusely).

    In my understanding Kejariwal is coming up with a new approach; his constituency should help him. In the end the people need to be democratized and that was what never happened in India.

    Come on people, participate in the process and make the new leadership a success, there is no point in being judgmental in the end. Neither Modi nor the Congress have never initiated a participatory politics. .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Absolutely, Prasanna, you've put the matter in a better perspective.

      Delete
  8. I agree. I was considering a null vote, but am now solidly behind the AAP. I don't see the harm in giving them a chance, or two, nation wide. Truly, what is the worst that can happen, that hasn't already?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes. Give AAP a chance. Everyone had a free run till now. Let the middle class have a say finally. It may not last, but it is worth trying. I am going to vote for AAP, if they contest here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AAP may not really belong to the middle class, Pattu. I've always felt in my veins that the party belongs to the lower income groups.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...

Dark Fantasy

An old friend of mine was with me in my kitchen when Amazon’s delivery man rang to know the location of my residence. He was the same person who delivered all my cat food subscriptions regularly. “The location shown is confusing,” he explained. “I haven’t ordered anything,” I said having checked my profile on Amazon. He delivered the pack promptly enough and I was curious to see what it was. X, my friend, was in the kitchen cooking the prawns he had brought all the way from Kochi, his own city which reeks of seafoods naturally. “Dark Fantasy,” he mused when he saw the content of the package. Someone had sent me a box of Dark Fantasy cookies. I’m sure there isn’t any person on earth who keeps dark fantasies about me in their (her, as alleged by X) conscious/subconscious/unconscious mind. I wasn’t ever such a charming person at any time in my life. “Dark fantasy,” X said refusing to believe my deprecatory self-assessment though he knew it was quite true. “You never know where ...