Skip to main content

Irom Sharmila’s Disillusionment


Irom Sharmila in Santhi Gramam
Sixteen years of youth is the price that Irom Sharmila paid for learning the lesson that politics is not meant for idealists.  She has reasons to feel disillusioned and dejected.  She has reasons to seek shelter in Santhi Gramam in Kerala. 

“Politics is dirty by nature,” she learnt the hard way.  There’s no place for idealists in politics.  The age of the Mahatma and his hunger strikes are fairy tales today.  We live in a world of hardcore pragmatism of the kind espoused by none other than Lord Krishna in Kurukshetra.  Politics is war.  Strategies matter, not idealism. 

“Dharma is subtle,” the great idealist can only philosophise. And perish for that Dharma. 

Ms Sharmila blamed money power and muscle power.  It’s much more than that, dear Ms Sharmila.  It’s brain power.  And there’s divine power too.  There is a whole pantheon of gods involved in this war called politics today in our country.  It’s a war to redeem Bharat from all kinds of mlecchas.  Money is just one of the many strategies.  Each time you hear great concepts like ‘development’ the idealist in you may be reawakened.  Development is a strategy too. 

Irom Sharmila seems to have understood that.  She has decided to quit politics.  Right decision.  Politics is for those who are “made of sterner stuff.”  Mr Sharmila has reached the right place, in the company of Uma Preman of Santhi Gramam.  Ms Preman knows how to combine idealism with humane pragmatism.  Humane, not Machiavellian politics. And pragmatic, not effete idealism. 

Best wishes to you, Ms Sharmila.




Comments

  1. I completely endorse your views. The unscrupulous and mean politics of India got better of the idealism of the Iron Lady who fought relentlessly for truth and justice. She has learnt the hard way that in today's era (in fact, any era) truth and justice have to lose out to untruth and injustice because duals are always decided not by ideal but by might.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps 16 years is too long a period for one to learn one lesson. I think Ms Sharmila should have realised the futility of her strategy long ago. Anyway, her idealism and naive optimism are far preferable to the venal strategies our political parties resort to.

      Delete
  2. Maybe Akhilesh is a good and youthful leader. Sharmila regardless of the votes she won is a different genus- adopted a lifestyle of hardship - relentless fighting against atrocity of soldiers against hapless people of this country. When a soldier die in a fight to protect the country we salute them - when they do atrocities - government will never protect people - Sharmila did not agree the silence of government and people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As I mentioned in a response above, Sharmila's hardships went in vain. Strategies are important in politics. She failed to learn that. Now she remains disillusioned, feeling betrayed by her own people. We can't blame the people either. They have suffered much already.

      Delete
  3. As Vijay says below, Akhilesh and Sharmila have no comparison. Akhilesh will learn the lessons soon and become a successful politician. But Sharmila may never succeed as a politician.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Portable Water Filter Shop Best Chrome Faucet Diverter Valve, Replacement inline RO filter, Heavy Duty Water Counter Portable Water Filter Systems Los Angeles, US.

    Buy Best Quality with Latest Technology used Titan Water Heavy Duty Counter Top , 5 Stage water filter, Replacement Inline Filter, Reverse Osmosis & Membrane Portable Water Filter in Los Angeles, US.

    For more information you can check it out here : http://titanwaterpro.3dcartstores.com/Reverse-Osmosis-Portable-Water-Filter-System-_c_7.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. First of all why do people like Sharmila think of entering Indian politics knowing full well the state of Indian political scenario. Same thing goes for Arvind Kejriwal. He started with bang. But by all indications, the party is turning out to be just another party out to grab the so called secular votes. His fellow party members have thrown all sense of ethics and morality to the wind. He himself seems just another power hungry politician seeking power and glory for its own ends.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Sharmila thought that she could do something more meaningful by entering politics. Now the election experience seems to have taught her the necessary lesson.

      You're right about Kejriwal too. I had high expectations in that man and I voted for his party both the times as I was in Delhi in those days. But he disappointed me.

      Politics is irredeemable. That's why macho men succeed in it. Criminals rule the roost. Sad but what can we do?

      Delete
  7. Manipur civil rights activist Irom Sharmila married her long-time partner Desmond Coutinho, a British national, under the Special Marriage Act at the Sub-Registrar's office here this morning.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...