Skip to main content

Fortress of Falsehood

Image courtesy


Truth is rather banal and often ugly too. Falsehood is so charming that it spreads like wildfire through gossips and rumours via social networks as well as so-called national television channels newspapers. Quite many people in India have sold their souls to falsehood, it appears, as the media channels have sold themselves to the government.

When a national leader of the stature of Amit Shah (whether he deserves the position or we deserve him there is a different matter) professes shamelessly that the fate of Karnataka would have been different if the Congress-JD(S) MLAs were not locked up in a resort throws a blinding light on the fortress of falsehood erected by the Kaliyuga Chanakya and his loyal emperor. The claim is not very unlike a burglar’s declaration that your possessions will be his if you leave your door unlocked.

Perhaps too many Indians are indeed leaving their doors unlocked. Not the doors of their houses but the doors of their judgment. That’s why an infinity of falsehood is spreading on the social networks. There are too many hate messages there meant to divide the nation into Hindus versus the rest.

The ruling BJP could not deliver on their promises of development, clean governance, public hygiene, and so on. In order to win the next general elections they need a new battleground to fight on and Hindu Rashtra has been deemed fit. One of the easiest things to do is to stir up religious sentiments of people. After all, what can be more holy and hence more provocative than one’s god(s)?  

 Hatred is injected into people’s hearts using falsehood. It is done using social networks so that the messages remain anonymous and no one faces legal action. There is a whole IT cell at work, paid for by the ill-gotten money of the Party, spewing venom day in and day out with the intention of dividing the country into two inimical groups. Many of these messages claim that it’s going to be another Kurukshetra War with the Hindus as the Pandavas and the rest as the Kauravas. You can imagine who Krishna and Arjuna are.

“Your duty is to kill, Arjuna,” says Krishna. “In a battle there are no brothers and uncles; there are only enemies. Stretch your bow and shoot your arrow. Do your duty without pondering over the results….”

What is left unsaid is: “Kill and die so that a few of us will live in opulence when the whole show is over.”

Even the original Kurukshetra had its unfair share of falsehood all over right from beginning to the end. Too many fortresses of falsehood. It’s a great legacy indeed.


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

You are welcome to read or download my ebook Life's Magic:  Here

Comments

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
37 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
18 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more

Thomas the Saint

AI-generated image His full name was Thomas Augustine. He was a Catholic priest. I knew him for a rather short period of my life. When I lived one whole year in the same institution with him, I was just 15 years old. I was a trainee for priesthood and he was many years my senior. We both lived in Don Bosco school and seminary at a place called Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. He was in charge of a group of boys like me. Thomas had little to do with me directly as I was under the care of another in-charge. But his self-effacing ways and angelic smile drew me to him. He was a living saint all the years I knew him later. When he became a priest and was in charge of a section of a Don Bosco institution in Kochi, I met him again and his ways hadn’t changed an iota. You’d think he was a reincarnation of Jesus if you met him personally. You won’t be able to meet him anymore. He passed away a few years ago. One of the persons whom I won’t ever forget, can’t forget as long as the neurons continu
16 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more