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Disillusionment


Mr Ram Jethmalani is disillusioned with Mr Narendra Modi.  “I thought God had sent him as his ‘Aulia’ [representative] for India’s salvation... How I became the victim of fraud,” said the eminent lawyer who was in Bihar asking the people there to defeat the BJP in the imminent elections.  And he is a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha!

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion,” said Arthur Koestler whose faith in communism met with a tragic end because of Stalin, a leader who had made tall promises to his country.  Mr Jethmalani may not possess the insightfulness of Koestler to understand that “As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…” [Darkness at Noon, Koestler’s illustrious novel].  Hence a few blustering dialogues in Bihar will ease the pain in his heart which will soon be ready for compromises.  Our politicians have mastered the art of not hearing what is inconvenient even without holding their hands over their ears. 

But Justice Katju is not a politician.  So when he says that he eats beef and doesn’t consider the cow as his mother, it should ideally produce disillusionment among some people at least.  Instead it produced a lot of heat and dust in the social media.  The pain of disillusionment could have paved the way to truth.  But heat and dust can only produce pollution. 

ABVP, the student wing of BJP, clashed with SFI, the student wing of CPI(M) in a college in Kerala on account of the cow.  Beef used to be the most common non-veg item in the menu of Kerala’s restaurants until the Modi govt started rewriting the country’s history.  Who is waiting for disillusionment in Kerala: ABVP who is dreaming up a new history for the country or the general public in Kerala whose diet is being reworked with the zeal displayed by Aurangzeb in reworking certain religious places?

Who is right?  Who is wrong?  Whose prerogative is disillusionment?

Let me end this apparently haphazard post with yet another quote.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”  [Rumi]


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Comments

  1. Online JournalistOctober 6, 2015 at 6:05 PM

    Sadly many Indians are still suffering from illusion.
    Hope they will become disillusioned soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 6, 2015 at 6:47 PM

      Illusion provides its own comforts. That's why people don't want to lose their illusions.

      Delete
  2. Titas BiswasOctober 10, 2015 at 11:08 AM

    Uh - yet another mindblowing article.Your blog is a pleasure,Sir.Well,firstly,I have been waiting for long to have a chance to taste beef and of course I do not consider the cow to be my mother.And yes,I was born in a so called Hindu family,whereas I (existentially) am an agnostic atheist.Also,Stalin frustrates me and many of us no end.I have no nervousness in declaring that my interest in social sciences began to grow through an early interest in history,basically civilizations and then from socialist/ardent communist perspectives that have now changed course towards an inclination in anarchy.And the murder of Trotsky,the captivation of Kapitsa,murders angers any humanist no end.
    CPI(M) has a strange history.They evolved through a good motive because they evolved through social movements and that was democratic.There was an intense course of torture they had to face from the INC at that time,at least in West Bengal.At the end,the then CM,B Bhattacharya had got so explosively capitalist,that they faced their fate.The current party in power is beyond all our nightmares.And look at them,they are all illusion-ed.
    The Modi hoax is another new story.I wonder how people even accept a murderer like him to be a "leader".Also,should we really go back to wearing sarees all the time and wearing that hood and covering our faces and cooking and not getting educated and worshipping 33 crores of deities,meaningless deities of course.What's going on?On one side,the youth indulge in watching stuff they aren't supposed to and on the pretentious side,they worship cows and considers the otherwise a sin!!What's left to say?
    And about Rumi's lines,they are very comforting.Brilliant article,again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 10, 2015 at 12:49 PM

      I wonder whether I'm finding another person who shares my anarchist inclinations. :)

      I don't call myself an anarchist. Others gave me that title recently and played a whole lot of games... People love games, let it be.

      Every revolution worth the name ended in dictatorship. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin... all came riding the waves of a revolution. I don't trust revolutions. That's why Rumi has to come to my aid :) :(

      Delete

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