Skip to main content

Chatur Baniya and Amit Shah




Amit Shah is a chatur baniya. His political career is mired in filth and blood.  He has used devious methods to bring his party to power in his own as well as other states and also to eliminate enemies.  He is the master of trickery and even encounter killings are part of his arsenal.  He knows how to get what he wants.  Recently he was in Kerala where he hurled an ultimatum to the party workers: win at any cost.  Clashes broke out in Kerala from the very next day.  Sooner than later, Amit Shah can take pride in destroying the communal harmony that existed in Kerala for decades.

Courtesy C P Sharma
Amit Shah knows how to use power effectively.  His party is changing the history textbooks wherever it is in power.  In the new textbooks, the tin heroes of RSS like Savarkar have displaced the real heroes like Mahatma Gandhi.  The entire freedom struggle is being shown in a different light.  The history of the country is being rewritten entirely.  Fair becomes foul and vice versa.  That’s Amit Shah’s magic.  The magic of the chatur baniya.

We all tend to judge other people according to our own standards.  If I am a jealous person, I see jealousy in everybody else.  If I am greedy, I tend to judge all others as motivated by greed.  Similarly, Amit Shah has judged that Mahatma Gandhi was a chatur baniya. 

Gandhi was clever, no doubt.  He was a baniya by caste.  So Amit Shah is not wrong entirely.  Yet he is terribly, terribly wrong.  Gandhi was far, far more than a chatur baniya. 

Gandhi had a clear and profound vision which embraced the whole of humanity.  His entire philosophy was based on love and compassion and a deep understanding of human nature.  In spite of all the drawbacks he had as a human being as well as visionary, Gandhi towers infinitely above the puny minds like Amit Shah. 

Amit Shah and his BJP may remove Gandhi and other great people from history textbooks.  They may warp the impressionable minds of the present students.  They may saffronise the entire country.  But any edifice constructed on a slimy foundation will come tumbling down in the due course of time.  Gandhi will go on shining in the history books for ages to come.  Amit Shah will vanish from them like a mushroom that shot up accidentally though venomously.  The venom will spread some plague for a while, no doubt.  But mankind knows how to overcome plagues too. 


Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJune 11, 2017 at 9:20 AM

    Drawbacks of Gandhi! I would like to know your reasons to say so ( perhaps another blog? :). I have heard about some criticisms, but what exactly were his faults? I haven't read any non fictions based on Gandhi, so I lack the proper understanding.

    Amit Shah is a very intelligent person, a king maker whom I consider as a modern day Chanakya. He and Hemanta Biswa Sarma of Assam carry a uncanny resemblance and it is only a matter f time that their associations would bring something disastrous to the political situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 11, 2017 at 9:31 AM

      Everyone has limitations, however great one may be. Gandhi too had. His views on technology and development were too idealistic, for example. His notions on medical science and the way he denied his wife certain food on idealistic grounds are questionable....

      I have described Shah as Chanakya many times. He is that. If only he could use that brain for better purposes!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ivan the unusual friend

When you are down and out, you will find that people are of two types. One is the kind that will walk away from you because now you are no good. They will pretend that you don’t exist. They don’t see you even if you happen to land right in front of them. The other is the sort that will have much fun at your expense. They will crack jokes about you even to you or preach at you or pray over you. This latter people are usually pretty happy that you are broke. You make them feel more comfortable with themselves even to the point of self-righteousness. Ivan was an exception. When I slipped on the path of life and started a free fall that would last many years before I hit the bottom without a thud but with enormous anguish, Ivan stood by me for some reason of his own. He didn’t display any affection which probably he didn’t have. He didn’t display any dislike either. There was no question of preaching or praying. No jokes either. Ivan was my colleague for a brief period at St Joseph’s
14 comments
Read more

Joe the tenacious friend

AI-generated illustration You outgrow certain friendships because life changes you in ways that nobody, including you, had expected. Joe is one such friend of mine who was very dear to me once. That friendship cannot be sustained anymore because I am no more the person whom Joe knew and loved to amble along with. And Joe seems incapable of understanding the fact that people can change substantially. Joe and I were supposed to meet one of these days after a gap of more than two decades. I scuttled the meeting rather heartlessly. Just because Joe’s last messages carried words that smacked of intimacy. My life has gone through so much devastating fire that the delicate warmth of intimacy has become repulsive. Joe was a good friend of mine while we were in Shillong. He was a post-graduate student and a part-time schoolteacher when I met him first. I was a fulltime schoolteacher teaching math and science to ninth and tenth graders. My dream was to postgraduate in English literature an
11 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
11 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more