Shyam was grazing his goats on the hillock when a group of men stopped
their SUV on the roadside and walked towards him.
“If we tell you the exact number of goats in your flock, will you give
us one of your goats?”
Shyam was amused. “Yes,” he nodded.
One of the young men took out his smartphone, fingered with it for a
while and said, “123.” [The notorious IT cell of the party had apparently accessed
Shyam’s flock too.]
“Right,” Shyam agreed. “Pick your goat.”
The men picked up a goat and carried it to their SUV.
“Are you from any right-wing organisation?” Shyam asked as they moved
on.
“Yup,” one man said. “How’d you know?”
“Simple. First of all, you came to me totally uninvited. Secondly, you
taxed me for telling me something I already know. Thirdly, you don’t know a
thing about goats. This creature you’re carrying is my dog.”
This is an old story that I have adapted for this post. This story was
kicked up in my memory by another adaptation of it in a Malayalam newspaper I
read this morning. Next to the article which carried this story was a report
about a Covid-19 patient who died in Kottayam [place in Kerala] yesterday and
whose body could not be cremated because a BJP councillor from the municipality
organised a huge protest against the cremation.
 |
| BJP-led Protest in Kottayam against a cremation |
The dead man belongs to a Christian sect which does not have a cemetery
in the locality. So the authorities convinced the relatives of the man to cremate
the body in the municipal electric crematorium. A BJP councillor got a whole lot of women (and a couple
of men too) to block the way to the crematorium under the pretext of
safeguarding public health. The real reason? BJP’s usual strategy of
communalising everything. A Christian corpse doesn’t belong in the municipal crematorium!
Kerala was once described
as a lunatic asylum by none less than Swami Vivekananda. The great
monk was shocked by the inhuman insanity that prevailed in the state because of
religions in general and caste discrimination in particular. Kerala learnt the
required lessons and liberated itself from the clutches of savage totems that
were misused by the upper castes in order to maintain their social dominance.
Today, thanks to BJP and its rapidly spreading myopic ideology, Kerala
is reverting to the lunatic asylum it once was. The right-wing Malayalis have
revealed the fangs and claws of their regressive and myopic vision time and
again in the recent years. Just for the sake of getting a political upper hand,
the entire atmosphere in the state is devilishly communalised by the supporters of BJP in
Kerala.
This is the normal strategy of BJP and its associates all over India.
They communalise
everything from the Taj Mahal to the corpse in Kottayam. The entire
socio-political reality in the country is seen through the myopic lens of
religion.
By the time the majority of Indians realise that the balderdash dished
out by BJP today has nothing to do with religion and it is going to create a
lunatic asylum out of a whole country, too much harm would be done. Goats
becoming dogs or Taj Mahal becoming Tejo Mahalaya is just the tip of the
iceberg. Beneath the surface of these hilarious transmutations lie the real
perversions of human minds and hearts. That perversion is the essence of the right wing’s
myopia today.
My appreciations for your way of presenting things never cease to stop, Tom, despite my rationality telling me this is a one-sided tale showing a collection of people in the dark shadows. There are many a thousand of incidents by other prevailing groups both political and religious, specifically in the state of Kerala who show same traits. No difference. It is a clash of clans for vested interests. When we say devilishly communalised, may I ask, are the Hindus and the so called BJP only playing nasty? Is that not true there has been deliberate and successful attempts of converting people that was never addressed. Vested groups conveniently changed the percentage of population.
ReplyDeleteThere is a retaliation only when there is injustice.
I wonder who conveniently we forget the demographics were deliberately changed, the existing monuments were deliberately demolished to eradicate races and identities.
We need to take into account, had people from a particular faith who are deliberately shown in bad light, these days, been so communal and narrow minded, was there any possibility of other faiths stepping in and grow their population for some monetary commitments?
You sell when you solve an issue!
There was an issue that the Hindus were facing since independence, thanks to vested interests of a few and likes of BJP are capitalizing on that.
But the critics of BJP fall short of addressing the fact that there is/was a problem. Had there been none, they would not have had points to capitalize on.
Is it not time, we call spade a spade rather than accusing the company that is making products claiming they will solve some issue.
Anyways, thanks to these lockdowns and the change in working style, I could revisit old blogger friends and be sure to see me more often as you are one of those few I always love to read.
:)
Jack, I thank my stars I have no dog of my own yet. Otherwise your eloquence would have converted it into a goat by now. :)
DeleteThanks for being here and attempting to call the spade really by its name though it doesn't convince me. I'm one-sided, you say. Indeed I am. I am secular. Sickular in your lingo. I am an atheist, a rationalist, a thinker, and interestingly your kind of people don't have slangs for those. Funny? No, it aint. It just shows that these concepts haven't reached you people yet.
A bad debate, I know. I'm really someone who loves intellectual discussions rather than frontal assaults. I can never be a lyncher like your people.
Your people, you claim, are capitalizing on wrongs done to a whole community in the past. Well, this is a joke converted into a vedic truth by Modi and gang just for political gains. Nowadays even Modi must have forgotten that he started with that joke. His lingo has changed. He sounds serious these days. Remember those days when he spoke about Hum paanch, humara pachees? And the plastic surgery of Ganesha? Kabristan and shamsan slogans? It's too long a list for this little space. The point is that he is just a local goon whom fortune elevated to a high position.
The country has no leaders today. Heroes do not make history, history makes heroes. Modi just happens to be the thistledown blown up by India's doomed history. A tragedy. The real tragedy is awaiting us still. You don't understand it. I try to point it out again and again. And you think I'm just a critic. A lot of people think so. Sad.
Demolitions have happened all over the world. The Europeans demolished entire civilisations in America and Australia and elsewhere. The Muslim invaders demolished temples and churches. So you want to retaliate by demolishing mosques today? Churches today? How different are you from those savage marauders? That's the basic question I'm raising in the post. I do it gently.
And you have questioned me gently too. But I feel that your gentleness is just a mask. Mine is genuine, friend. I'm really happy that I don't have a pet that your ideology will steal to wreak vengeance on my forefathers' religion which I gave up long ago. A dog is far more valuable than a religious fanatic.
I'm happy that you claim to read me. I'm sad you don't ever seem to have understood me. I have a heart. I trust the heart.
You taking life too seriously ! :)
DeleteI apologize if I sounded too critical to be termed " your people/you" .
By the way atheist does not mean you have discovered there is no good. You are just yet another believer. Who says there is no God. Yet to be proven! Am I correct if I say so?
I presume we both made one mistake. We presumed about each other as per our defense. Do we really need to validate anything to each other? At this stage of life when we have seen enough life to really be in someone's good books? I genuinely like reading you since I know you. We may always mutually agree to disagree on a topic or few.
I love reading perspectives because I have this striving artist in me that likes addressing things from 9 different angles and more. :D Still learning! I wish I was not branded as a group/ herd member. Be it of a communist or fundamentalist, I have no liking for being a herd member and validate and seek validation.
I am- Me! :)
Neither a blind believer nor a blind non believer. I am a striving seeker!
And yet again I would say - no matter who we think we are and how much we perceive we know, we know nothing about the creation. So better not brand ourselves or others.
But again, it is just an opinion and you are open to counter me even on this. :)
Atheist does not mean you have discovered there is no GOD* :)
DeleteI re-read your comment and find a little bit of self validation from my end is also mandatory :) - I love automation and yet run 100 km a week. I am into AI so human emotions and ideologies ( based on their limited data)and their reactions are set of triggers and nothing more to me yet I am a doodler and striving artist who is dedicated to looking every aspect of the creation via as many perspectives possible! :)
ReplyDeleteThis may help you understand each other and where we come from. :)