Skip to main content

Innocence

From Indian Express


There is no way to rule innocent people, as Ayn Rand said. How do you put any sort of control on innocent people? And ruling is all about putting controls, isn’t it?  “The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals,” said Rand. If there aren’t enough criminals, the government will make them. You declare more and more things as illegal and then it becomes impossible for people to live without breaking laws.

   From the time the Modi government came to power in 2014 an endless list of laws has been implemented. A facile taxing system called GST, Real Estate Regulation Act, laws for recovery of debt, insolvency and bankruptcy, linking almost everything under the sun with Aadhar… It’s a formidable list. Then there are the unwritten rules implemented by all sorts of volunteers like the various Senas: what food you can eat and cannot eat, what dress you may wear, who you can marry, which god you can worship, in which language you should give interviews and write exams…

   Modi’s party leaders are now clamouring for rewriting the Constitution of the country. They want to make more things illegal for certain sections of the country’s population. Will the country have enough jails to hold all the new criminals who will be created by the new Constitution?

   Personally, I would have loved to live a life far away from politics and politicians. In the pre-Modi era, it was not impossible to retain your innocence by choosing to stay away from politics and living your life as privately as possible. Yes, there was a lot of corruption. You had to bribe almost everybody on the way in order to get things done particularly in government offices. Corruption has not become any less now and, worse, a lot more things have become difficult. Survival itself has become difficult with prices of almost everything rising day after day. Our farmers have chosen to throw their produces on the road in despair. Many of us will soon be forced to throw ourselves on the road in utter dejection.

   The greatest tragedy is that you can’t even choose to live in the privacy of your home and workplace retaining your sanity and innocence. The government has entered everywhere under the guise of cleaning up public life. Maybe, this is cleaning up: letting people perish.

   Innocence is dead. You have to break laws if you want to survive. Otherwise get ready to throw yourself on the road.


Comments

  1. Tanuj VyasJune 7, 2018 at 1:48 PM

    Hello, Please #help our #crowdfunding campaign to complete post-production work of rajasthani feature film "NAMAK" by making a donation - even the smallest amount would mean a lot to us or you can help by sharing with your friends!
    ketto.org/namak

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whispers of the Self

Book Review Title: The Journey of the Soul Author: Dhanya Ramachandran Publisher: Sahitya Publications, Kozhikode, 2025 Pages: 64 “I n the whispers of the wind, I hear a gentle voice.” Dhanya Ramachandran’s poems are generally gentle voices like the whispers of the wind. The above line is from the poem ‘Seek’. There is some quest in most of the poems. As the title of the anthology suggests, most of the poems are inward journeys of the poet, searching for something or offering consolations to the self. Darkness and shadows come and go, especially in the initial poems, like a motif. “In the darkness, shadows dance and play.” That’s how ‘Echoes of Agony’ begins. There are haunting memories, regrets, and sorrow in that poem. And a longing for solace. “Tears dry, but scars remain.” Shadows are genial too occasionally. “Shadows sway to the wind’s soft sigh / As we stroll hand in hand beneath the sky…” (‘Moonlit Serenade’) The serenity of love is rare, however, in the collecti...
7 comments
Read more

Mandodari: An Unsung Heroine

Mandodari and Ravana by Gemini AI To remain virtuous in a palace darkened by the ego of the king is a hard thing to do, especially if one is the queen there. Mandodari remained not only virtuous till the end of her life in that palace, but also wise and graceful. That’s what makes her a heroine, though an unsung one. Her battlefield was an inner one: a moral war that she had to wage constantly while being a wife of an individual who was driven by ego and lust. Probably her only fault was that she was the queen-wife of Ravana. Inside the golden towers of Ravana’s palace, pride reigned and adharma festered. Mandodari must have had tremendous inner goodness to be able to withstand the temptations offered by the opulence, arrogance, and desires that overflowed from the palace. She refused to be corrupted in spite of being the wife of an egotistic demon-king. Mandodari was born of Mayasura and Hema, an asura and an apsara, a demon and a nymph. She inherited the beauty and grace of her...
19 comments
Read more

Good Friday and Jai Sri Ram

By Gemini Today is Good Friday in the Christian calendar. Truth was nailed to the cross some 2000 years ago on this day by a governor of the Roman Empire who did want to know what truth was before he succumbed to the pressure of the Jewish priests and their right-wing mob to crucify Jesus. “What is truth?” Pilate asked. The trial of Jesus was going on with a ferocious mob of right-wing Jews shouting murderous slogans outside the praetorium. Have you ever wondered why the slogans turn murderous whenever the right-wing gives them voice? I have, many times. And my answer is: religion belongs to the emotional half of the human brain, and in the case of too many people that half is unevolved. Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question. Rather, Pilate doesn’t wait for an answer. He knows the answer probably. His problem is not an epistemological definition of truth. His problem is whose truth is to be given more weightage here now. There is Jesus’ truth on the one hand, and the murderous r...
6 comments
Read more

Omens in the Ramayana

Illustration by Gemini AI Dasharatha is preparing for the coronation of Rama as the King of Ayodhya. It is the most joyous night of his life. His subjects celebrating outside. Garlands adorn every doorway. Drums roll through the city like thunder from the heavens. But there is something ominous that disturbs the King who is planning to retire. He steps out into the courtyard. The sky is clear, but a thunder growls in the distance. There is a howling wind that tosses the lamps and banners, and snuffs out the light. His horses whinny unnaturally as if they sensed something that their master failed to perceive. Even the palace elephants raise their trunks and trumpet into the darkness. Some birds screech in the trees. “My spirit trembles,” Dasharatha mutters to himself, “though there is no enemy at the gates.” The enemy was within. And the omens were not for nothing. Rama wouldn’t be the king. Kaikeyi had other plans. The Ramayana describes signs and portends that appeared bef...
16 comments
Read more

Nala, Nila, and Ram Setu

Nala and Nila are architects of faith. They built a bridge between the mortal and the divine, a bridge that mortal creatures built for an immortal god, a bridge between human effort and divine purpose. Ram Setu, aka Adam’s Bridge today, connects India with Sri Lanka, from Rameswaram to Mannar Island. It is a 48-km-long chain of limestone shoals, sandbanks, and islets that run across the Palk Strait. The ocean is quite shallow in the region: 1 to 10 metres deep. Science tells us that the ‘bridge’ is a natural formation, resulting from a combination of coral reefs, sand and sediment deposition, tidal and wave actions, and rising sea levels over thousands of years. Some surveys also suggest that the top layer contains stones resting on a base of sand, which is unusual and could indicate human intervention. Moreover, the bridge was reportedly walkable until the 15 th century.  In the Ramayana, the bridge was built by the Vanaras under the guidance of Nala and Nila, sons of Vishw...
18 comments
Read more