Skip to main content

Why I stopped writing politics

Image from Wikipedia


When you are confronted with a situation that is irredeemably hopeless, what do you do? I would choose to avoid it and walk on. In the less sophisticated parlance of the village that I have chosen to live in now, if you step on shit you will stink.

Three months before Mr Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India, I made a prediction in my blog: “Modi will engender a civil war in the country if he becomes its Prime Minister, my instincts predict.” Within months of his becoming PM, many Christian places of worship were attacked in Delhi and peripheral regions. Eventually Muslims and Hindu Dalits became the targets of hydra-headed attacks. People were killed in the name of cows and other totems.  Women were assaulted, raped and killed. The tragedy goes on.

Most of the promises made in Modi’s election manifesto have remained unfulfilled though the country is marching towards the next general elections. Development, job creation, corruption-free governance and bringing down prices were what Indians voted for. What they got is more corruption, more poverty, more unemployment, more taxes, rocketing prices and, worst of all, mounting mutual hatred bred by false propaganda and brazen chicanery.

The country has been brought down to the worst of imaginable situations. It will be a Herculean task for any leader now to bring basic sanity back to the nation. Unfortunately, there is no sign of any such leader. Tragically, Modi will come to power again in 2019, my instincts tell me. Murphy’s Law will continue to work out and wreak its vengeance on the nation.

Hope was the last item in Pandora’s Box. All the evils and miseries of the world flew out of that box, according to Greek mythology. I don’t know if hope was the last misery or the last redemptive power. I would like to hope anyway, hope for a better India.  India cannot become worse any further now.

A cry in the mountains is known to have started off an avalanche.

Comments

  1. A bleak future awaits indeed....The self destructive mechanism seems to have been put on by us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Indeed by us. We are the real power in democracy. But 'we' have been brainwashed by propaganda and chicanery.

      Delete
  2. Sir, when the countrymen are happy being fooled, why should the 'leader' hesitate to fool them ? The trouble with the masses or the voters themselves. We are destined to get the leader we deserve. To end all this nonsense visible throughout the nation, first of all the countrymen have to open their eyes and see the true character of their highly revered 'leader'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is exactly what I tell my students too. We the people are responsible for the leaders we elect. BJP has successfully manipulated religious sentiments to fool people.

      Delete
  3. you seem to be biased against the BJP. CPI-M is way more violent than any other party. Congress is the most corrupt party ever. They won't think twice before supporting terrorists even. Lets be honest. BJP stopped religious conversions & that is why minorities are going mad. Has your freedom been curtailed post BJP coming to power?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your comment is a symptom of one of the worst tragedies that befell the nation after Modi came to power. Everything is seen through the filters of religion. I don't care for religion. I'm not a believer as you would have understood if you had read at least a few of my posts. I'm questioning a lot of other things apart from communalisation of the nation (which is more terrible than the others). I'm questioning the utter lack of delivery of promises. Where is the development, where the Swachh Bharat, black money back in our accounts, employment, and a whole lot of other things? When such unpleasant questions are raised you harp on the same string of religion which your leader is doing from all possible platforms and thus hoodwinking the nation by playing on inane religious sentiments. I am unable to understand why Indians are so foolish as to be swayed by hollow rhetoric even if they are based on religion.

      Delete
    2. It truly is a situation where a thinking person no longer wants to talk/write about the atrocities that are being normalised in this country.

      Delete
    3. You have put it in the most dignified language possible, Kalpanaa.

      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

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...