Skip to main content

Paresh Rawal Blunders




American President Donald Trump was in Saudi Arabia the other day.  The man who came to power riding the anti-Muslim wave, the man who told the world that Muslims were the enemies of civilisation, now praises the great contributions of Islam to the world.  He mentioned the “ancient wonders” as well as the Saudi Arabia’s modern “soaring achievements in architecture.” He listed such “wonders” as Giza, Luxor and Alexandria to applaud the Islamic achievements.  He sought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia to bring peace and harmony into the world.

Whether Trump underwent some spiritual transformation is yet to be seen.  We know that he is a devout Christian who attends prayer services regularly and religiously.  But prayer services and rituals really don’t make people any better.  If they did, the world would have been a paradise long ago. 

Whatever that is, Trump has apparently changed his approach from one based on hatred to one based on cooperation.  This new approach might work.  I hope it does.  At least it gives hope a chance while hatred can achieve no good.

Courtesy: clipartfest.com
This is one lesson that India’s Right wing is yet to learn.  The latest example is Paresh Rawal’s suggestion to the Indian Army to use Arundhati Roy as a human shield in Kashmir. Leaving aside the insult it implicitly sticks to the Army, the suggestion smacks of the pettiness that accompanies the entire outlook of India’s Right wing.  

Arundhati Roy stands far, far above petty nationalism.  She has described herself as a “global citizen.” That’s what we all should be: citizens of the world who respect every human being irrespective of race and religion.  Ms Roy’s views on Kashmir spring from that broad, global outlook.  Narrow-minded bigots like Rawal cannot be expected to understand such benignity. 

Donald Trump was lauded as a great hero by India’s Right wing because he spoke the same language of hatred which the latter has not only mastered but also is wielding effectively in most parts of the country.  But Trump seems to have learnt better lessons.  Are people like Rawal ready to learn?  If they are, India might still have a chance to stay united as one nation.

“It is a choice between two futures,” as Trump proclaimed in Saudi Arabia.  “If we really want to address that crisis (in Kashmir),” Ms Roy wrote a year ago in Outlook, “if we really want to stop the endless cycle of killing and dying, if we really want to stem the haemorrhaging, the first step has to be a small concession to honesty.  We have to have an honest conversation.”

Yes, it is basic honesty that the Right wing in India should acquire first.  And then the willingness to shed hatred – if they are incapable of learning love, at least that: shed the hatred.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniMay 23, 2017 at 1:03 PM

    I was planning to write about a similar topic on one Major Leetul Gogoi, from Assam, who has been applauded by the Indian Army of using a stone pelter as a shield.

    Yes, Arumdhati Roy's God of small things left me in transient state of hangover for days, such is the power of her words and intellect.

    What I don't understand is, why can't she be flexible and find reasons to the correctness of both the sides instead of adhering to one. Communists are not always right, stone pelters are not always right, anarchism is not always right.

    Or perhaps I am highly biased due to the media.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2017 at 7:54 PM

      Every person who is passionate about something is biased naturally, I guess. Isn't the entire right wing in India today totally biased against the minorities? Their whole thinking is rooted in hatred. Compared to that Ms Roy's bias (yes, we call it bias insofar as her views are rooted in an ideology) is almost sacred. When she says that Kashmir belongs to the people of Kashmir and they have the right to decide their destiny, is it really a bias? When she says that whenever some entrepreneur wants some forest land, thousands of tribal people are displaced in the name of bringing them to the mainstream, is she biased? When she says that big dams don't serve the purpose is she biased?

      Yes, stone pelting is not right. Yes, terrorism is terrible. Yes, communism is outdated. But Ms Roy is at least honest. She is humane. As Sanjay Bhat IPS said I would love to sit with her tied to the jeep as a human shield.

      Delete
    2. Pranju chakrapaniMay 23, 2017 at 8:24 PM

      Your arguments are powerful except for the part of letting the people of Kashmir decide the fate of their state.
      I am not well read on the deeper issues dated from the era of independence of India to understand the rebel of the Kashmiri youths but if they are let to decide the faith of their "own" land, then arunachali would also have to be let to decide their fate, then the Bodo people of Assam have to be let to decide their fate, then the indigenous population of Assam have to be let to decide our own fate.

      How can we decide our own fate? Won't it lead to economic instability? Won't it lead to disruption of one nation? Won't it lead to a time travel to the pre industrialisation?
      When the brightest minds should come forward to solve hunger issues, poverty, happiness index, right to dignity, is it wise to create disruption?

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2017 at 8:42 PM

      I'm not endorsing disruption or balkanisation of any sort. See why the small states of Northeast were carved out of erstwhile Assam. It is because the indigenous people of those areas were denied their rights. New states had to be formed. That is the solution.

      Now in the case of Kashmir, even as Ms Roy has said many times, the situation has gone out of the control of the govt of India. Moreover, there are many other factors such as the provision for a referendum, the anti-Muslim sentiments of the majoritarian govt, the rise of fundamentalism, and so on. How do we deal with them?

      Look at the rise of Bhim Sena. Their leader, Chandrashekhar, has vowed that the Brahmins (Aryans) will be driven out if it comes to more persecution of Dalits. Who is creating the problem?

      We need to look at the problems with the intention of solving them not with the intention of asserting our power.

      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
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more