Intellectuals and Criminals in India

Siren [Image from Ancient History]

Criminals rule India while intellectuals are consigned to the prison.

The Association for Democratic Reforms says that “there is an increase of 109% in the number of MPs with declared serious criminal cases since 2009” in India. 116 MPs of the ruling BJP are criminals and they will be legislating the future of the country. Many of them are not just the usual kind of assaulters, thugs, rapists or murderers; they are people driven by hatred for a particular community in the country. This makes the scenario more precarious than the usual criminals who used to enter politics earlier.

Many of the present MPs who have been given ministerial berths are people who openly professed their hatred for whole sections of Indian population. No less a personage than the present Home Minister of the country is a man who has vowed to “purge” the country of all “infiltrators except Buddha (sic), Hindus and Sikhs”. His term for certain Muslims in the country is “termites”. He has also faced many criminal charges for murder, extortion and kidnapping though he has been astute enough to keep his boat above all rising waters. Above all, he is a master of the vanishing act: his perceived enemies just vanish from public. How many Indians will vanish in the coming months is something we need to wait and watch.

There are plenty more such criminals in the current ministry and the parliament. There are terrorists too though they have been exonerated by the current wave of nationalism.

On the other hand, intellectuals and sane people who question the crimes and atrocities perpetrated against certain sections of people are arrested and sent to jail. They just vanish. Eminent writers like Hiren Gohain get charged with sedition. Scholars like Anil Teltumbde get labelled as “urban Maoist”. Sanjiv Bhatt IPS just vanished one day. Thinkers and intellectuals are being silenced by various measures taken by those in power at the Centre.

The worst is that the majority of people in the country seem to think that this is all right and this is how it should be. The country has a “strong” leader, according to them. They just can’t understand that strength doesn’t mean brutal power in a civilised world. This emphasis on brutal power which seeks to eliminate entire populations from the country reminds one of the Nazi Germany.

The symptoms indicate that India is on a backward journey, a journey towards a past that is being glorified as a civilisation without a parallel. Unless more and more people begin to realise that it is a journey through the dark labyrinths of a resurrected past, India’s future will be bleaker than ever. A glorified past is deadlier than the song of the Sirens.