Skip to main content

Whose India?



Salman Rushdie once mentioned a seminar organised in London on Indo-Anglian literature. It was attended by leading Indian English writers. On the first day an eminent novelist from India began his speech with a Sanskrit shloka which he refused to translate saying that every educated Indian was expected to understand the shloka without translation. There were Indian writers present there belonging to Muslim, Parsi, Christian and Sikh backgrounds, people with hardly any knowledge of Sanskrit. In one fell swoop the speaker had made all those writers outcasts, people who did not belong in India.

   That happened about three decades ago, much before Hindutva emerged as a dominant force in India. A few days back the Times of India reported that CBSE had decided to remove all languages except Hindi and Sanskrit from the list of options for Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET). The decision was revoked immediately because of strong protests from Tamil Nadu and the foresight of similar protests from many other states.


   
   Quite many institutions in the country have been populated with Hindutva supporters in the top positions, after Narendra Modi took charge in Delhi four years ago. The Modi-Shah combine has a devious plan to Hinduise the nation. The attacks on minority communities and their institutions including places of worship fall into that plan neatly. The lateral entry of bureaucrats planned recently is yet another step in the same direction.

   Probably the minority communities have chosen to remain silent or passive because there is just one more year left for the next general elections and they hope the elections will replace the government at the Centre. The new permutations and combinations emerging among the diverse political parties may indeed help the formation of a secular, liberal government.

   One cannot expect the Modi-Shah combine to be so naïve, however. They will come up with something unexpected to jettison all emerging alternative power structures. The political games they played recently in Karnataka alone (and continue to play still) show that they have no concern for any sort of ethics and power alone is their motive and goal.

   The question that will soon seek an answer is: Whose India is it?

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Kerala, my state, is now teaching Malayalam to 30 lack immigrants from North India!

      Delete
  2. But the question is except BJP which party can we expect in central govt. until the other parties reunite with each other but still the question is ....who will stand for the post of PM?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't believe in the 'There is no alternative' philosophy. The alternatives will appear as events turn out. A party that spews venom has to go; that's all. Let anyone else come; no one can be worse than this.

      Delete
    2. As i dont have much knowledge in politics but so far my poor knowledge asks is who can be that "anyone"? and yes its true that "the alternatives will appear as event turn out".

      Delete
  3. Sir, as said earlier too in certain of your posts, most of the people are not able to identify the real person hidden in the persona of the present Indian premier properly. Only Arun Shourie has not recognized him correctly but only when it's too late. First, let me clear the agenda of Amit Shah. It's nothing but grabbing power in the maximum territory of India either through winning elections or through manipulation without winning elections. He has nothing to do with Hinduism or Hinduising India or anything similar to that. That is the agenda of several associated people and outfits, not him. And as far as the person sitting on the chair of the prime minister is concerned, neither his supporters nor his opponents, neither his admirers nor his detractors have recognized him properly. He is a born dictator, a pure dictator, an absolute dictator sans any ideology or any attachment with Hinduism or Indian culture or the Hindu society or India or any ethics or the classes or the masses. His only and the only motive is to rule India for the longest period possible and give effect to all his whims and fancies (not any ideology because he does not believe in any ideology at all). For him all the individuals and institutions are nothing more than ladders which he has used and may have to use to climb the heights of power. And hope know, if after climbing, if one doesn't expect to come down, what's done with the ladder.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you to a large extent. It's a power game mostly. Mr Modi is a narcissist and a dictator. He loves to pamper himself with the best of everything he likes. He loves to travel round and show off himself, his royal robes and his retinue of chefs and stooges. Shah is the typical gamester, the kingmaker, the pawn killer.

      Having said that, we should not forget that Modi is quintessentially an RSS man with a racist agenda. Otherwise all this rewriting of history wouldn't take place. He is similar to Hitler in this regard. He has to eliminate a whole lot of people for his racist ambitions.

      Only those who are blinded by romantic nationalism and/or sentimental pietism will fail to see through the venality of Modi as well as Shah. But the number of such people in India is terrifyingly terrible.

      Delete
  4. I hope there is a good alternative to the current dispensation. Monopoly is bad, whichever be the party. It is very bad for democracy not to have a good and strong opposition.

    What is playing out now, is very similar to the time when Indira Gandhi was in her prime. There was no opposition worth its name. Remember how some people in those days were so frustrated that people are not able to see the extent of destruction Indira Gandhi is doing to this country. (In many ways, Modi actually reminds one of Indira Gandhi, except with regard to the communal and religious issues.) Remember, how in 1977 Indira Gandhi was voted out almost by the entire nation, and within two years, the same people brought her back. Then later, another round of anti-Indira experiment floundered.

    The big setback to the polity now is the decline of the Congress. (Look at the way, it was forced to concede so much ground to the JDS in Karnataka.) The rise of splinter regional parties, with no national view or development plan, will simply be disastrous. It is happening at the cost of Congress, that is big worry. Somehow Congress will have to gets its act together, quicker the better.

    For that Congress, especially Rahul, will have to start countering Modi at the same level. For example, when Modi is talking of development and empowering women and youth, or about GST, or the need to bolster indigenous manufacturing capabilities, or even Clean India, Rahul will have to come up with something equally strong that either effectively punctures Modi's arguments or has enough weight of its own to overshadow Modi's policy initiatives. There is neither. Rahul's speeches really lacks meat. Actually, some other veteran Congress leaders can take Modi on much more effectively.

    The opposition will also have to stop merely criticising Modi. (It sounds very similar to what the non-Congress parties did in the end of 1980s and mid-1990s, merely criticising Indira Gandhi, with no viable alternative in hand.) Congress will have to showcase the alternative it has to Modi. It will have to adopt a strategy in political articulation and management, very similar to what Vajpayee, and later, Modi did.

    It sounds ironic, doesn't it? The problem is not with the party, the problem is with what the party leaders are doing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Quasi-Humans

Book Review Title: Soft Animal Author: Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2023 Pages: 261   Very many people – too many, in fact – live partial lives. That is, most people don’t explore the depths of anything: the meaning of their life, of their love, of their religion, whatever. There is no passion about anything. Consequently, life becomes dull, even painful. This novel is about the dull pain experienced by a woman in her mid-thirties. She is married to a rich man who was in a love-relationship with her for long enough before marriage. He is an IT professional and she is a homemaker. Mukund Chugh and Mallika Rao. A rich Punjabi boy and the not-so-rich “south Indian girl” (as her in-laws refer to her). Mukund is a good guy. Mallika, the first-person narrator tells us that “All my life I had wanted to be with someone like Mukund, someone so sure of themselves and their identity.” But disillusionment follows soon enough. Entering into married