Terrible Beauty

Photo by Tomichan Matheikal
at Jim Corbett National Park (some years ago)

“A terrible beauty is born,” lamented poet W. B. Yeats when the Irish rebellion against the British in 1916 was suppressed brutally by the Empire. Though Yeats supported the independence movement, like all enlightened souls he was against violence. When the fighters insisted on using violence, Yeats could only pass by “with a nod of the head / Or polite meaningless words.”

Many people including me in Modi’s India find themselves in Yeats’ position: incapacitated by mindless violence and hatred. In spite of the totally vitiated atmosphere, a formidably sizeable section of the country seem to be labouring under a monstrous delusion that they are living in a beautiful period of the country’s history. It is a terrible beauty indeed!

Someone like Shashi Tharoor cannot even express his opinion by making a metaphorical comparison about that terrible beauty. His office was attacked a criminal case was charged against him. Yet what he said is the obvious truth. Mercifully, he has refused to backtrack. I hope he continues to be brave to the end of this black drama that is unfolding in the country with more sound and fury than any normal citizen can endure without taking recourse to poetry and metaphors.

A genuine sage like Swami Agnivesh is attacked, beaten and kicked by some self-appointed guardians of the nation’s ethos. Swami Agnivesh has always been a voice of sanity. He has advocated fraternity and compassion. “We must liberate people from religion,” he has rightly said again and again. The assault on him by religious people vindicate his stand vis-à-vis religion.

The institutions run by the Missionaries of Charity are being raided because an employee of theirs committed a crime. The motive behind the raids is too obvious: tarnish the image of a particular minority community and make them the targets of the kind of assault that Swami Agnivesh suffered and Shashi Tharoor would have suffered had he been available on the street ruled by thugs donning the garb of nationalists.

Amnesty International reports that in the last six months alone 100 hate crimes have been committed against Dalits, adivasis and minority communities in the country. Uttar Pradesh with a Yogi as its Chief Minister leads the list while the Prime Minister’s own state of Gujarat follows close behind. There undoubtedly is a clear game plan: elimination of certain sections of the country’s population by hook or by crook.

And then the terrible beauty will be born, perhaps: the beauty of a homogenised nation much like the Hindu Pakistan that Shashi Tharoor mentioned. In the meanwhile, I would have liked to pass “with a nod of the head / Or polite meaningless words.” I tried, in fact. But my neurons rage within me. There is a man within me who refuses to buckle under the monstrous stupidity that is being peddled as nationalism.

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