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“I am happy dead than
being alive,” said Rohith Vemula in his suicide note. He “loved Science, Stars, Nature.” His country gave him superstitions, communal
hatred and hollow slogans. He died
feeling hollow in a country whose Prime Minister keeps mouthing beautiful
slogans about development.
The other day, senior BJP
leader Yashwant Sinha compared Mr Modi to Indira Gandhi with respect to the
dictatorial style that marked both. Of
course, he had to retract later for obvious reasons.
Is Mr Modi converting
India into Police Raj as Indira Gandhi did during Emergency? The way the protesters in Delhi were attacked
by Mr Modi’s police indicates that the Prime Minister is trying to re-create
Gujarat in Delhi. He probably hopes to
extend it gradually to the entire country.
Or, maybe, it’s just the only way he knows to handle dissension
with.
Senior leaders of the
party were sidelined long ago by Mr Modi.
Not that those leaders would have worked wonders. But they would not have vitiated the communal
atmosphere in the country so much, so much that even Hindus don’t feel free to
dream about stars if they belong to the lower castes. Forget Mr Modi’s erstwhile enemies belonging
to other religions.
Who has benefited after Mr
Modi became the Prime Minister? Only the
corporate sector. In that too, only those
at the top.
India has become a country
where the dreams belong to a select few while the vast majority begin to feel
the hollowness Rohith Vemula mentioned in his suicide note. A hollowness that is aggravated and
accentuated by a two-fold divide that Mr Modi’s kind of economic reform has
already established firmly in the country: economic divide and communal divide.
Probably, this is not what Mr Modi
wanted to achieve really. The communal
politics he played was only meant to be a tool, a means for rising to the
highest post in the country. Once
ensconced on that seat, he thought he could wave a magic wand and transform the
country into Swatchh Bharat and Digital India.
But the magic wand did not work anywhere, in fact. Not even in the El Dorado of America, Modi’s economic
role model. (Israel is his role model
for the other divide.)
Rohit Vemula died a
totally disillusioned young man. He knew
that he was living in a country which promised dreams but they were only hollow
promises for people like him. If people
like him dared to question the King in Indraprastha and his minions who wear
various garbs, his fellowship would be withheld and he would be expelled from
his hostel. Let us not forget that this
is not the first time young students sacrificed their lives for the sake of the
King. Remember Ishrat Jahan, for
example?
There’s something
radically wrong. A Yashwant Sinha can
speak about it, only to retract. Many
others of the same party did speak earlier.
Remember four “veteran leaders” of the party’s Margdarshak mandal accusing
the party of kowtowing to a handful?
Remember Arun
Shourie and Ram
Jethmalani?
Whose party is the BJP if
its own senior leaders feel painfully alienated from it?
Whose country is India if
a PhD scholar has to commit suicide because his stars were alienated from
him?
And whose country is it
where the police brutally beat up democratic dissenters?
How many Indians today actually
feel that they would be happy dead than alive, like Rohith Vemula?
Suicide of Rohit Vemulla, scheduled caste or not, is a tragic act. Whole nation should be sorry. Prejudice is in mind. It is not possible to change mindset in 18 months. So why blame Modi? Many atrocities had happened earlier also, against dalits, minorities and other people. No body had blamed congress. Is it because the party gave lip service, shed crocodile tears and did basically nothing. How does one account for 9 other suicides in Hyderabad Central University? Suicide in AIIMS and many others. All of these were dalit students. All these happened when secular progressive government were in place. It takes time to wean people away from job oriented mindset to entrepreneurial mindset. Government is trying. Please question why things did not happen earlier? Why as a people we are more interested in government dole rather than on our own enterprise? Wherever, poor people take recourse to entrepreneurship, they are quashed by government forces.
ReplyDeleteLet me respond with just one question. Why is BJP losing election after election? It's going to lose even in Gujarat next year - my prediction.
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