Skip to main content

God’s men?

 

Image from The Guardian

The problem with organisations like the Taliban and the Sri Rama Sena or Bajrang Dal is that they make choices for everyone in the country. The Taliban decides what the people of Afghanistan will wear, eat, learn, etc. The myriad right-wing organisations in India make similar choices for Indians though they haven’t yet reached the extremes of the Taliban. They will. It’s just a matter of time. Once the descent begins, it gathers momentum more rapidly than you imagine. All degeneration is like the avalanche: small beginning and disastrous ending.

Who wants to make decisions for everyone in the country? Who decides what everyone should wear, eat, drink, which god they will worship, which language they will speak, who they will love or hate? The answer is obvious. Only those who think they possess all truths can make such choices for everyone.

The Taliban think they are the custodians of all the essential truths. One such essential truth is that the television, music and cinema are immoral. Another: girls aged 10 and over should not study in schools. These custodians of truths are against knowledge, arts, and science. They think ignorance is innocence. They think morality is the edge of their sword. Their god is not very unlike a mafia don.

Last month, when the Taliban tightened their tentacles in many parts of Afghanistan, a directive was issued to religious leaders to provide a list of girls over 15 and widows under 45 for ‘marriage’ with Taliban fighters. For the women in Afghanistan, hell is just beginning. The women of Afghanistan won’t forget what the Taliban did to them when the outfit was in power during 1996-2001.

Is it about morality, truth, goodness? No way. It’s about who controls whom? It’s about power.

If it was about morality, truth and goodness, people would welcome it. Instead people are fleeing Afghanistan. They are jumping into airplanes. Some of them are hanging on the tyres. And they are falling off the planes from the skies. If the Taliban was bringing paradise, would the people be killing themselves this way?

The Taliban is giving to people what they want, not what the people want. They are not people’s leaders. Are they god’s men? Well, you decide. And don’t forget we have similar creatures in the making in India right now.

A paragraph from Tariq Ali's book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms

 xxx

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanAugust 16, 2021 at 8:12 PM

    Hari OM
    Appreciating the personal anger generated (trust me, there is gnashing of teeth and wailing in The Hutch at the state of Kabul today), it must also be understood that none of this, ultimately has anything at all to do with any Non-Earthly Presence and everything to do with greed and power. What is more, it is not the power you may think.

    As you quote Tariq Ali's book which was a repsonse to 9/11 and which holds clear arguments as to the influence of 'the west' (read USA in particular) in all these regions and how it actually is a causative factor, this recent discourse from TA may interest you. In it he mentions 'listen to the bells tolling in Kabul'... the filming was four months back.

    What is happening is an international disgrace. Within that wider scope, at the local level, what is happening could be considered a crime against humanity. Both of these are political in nature and require political response.

    Closer still, pertaining to the tract you chose to share in the image, is the personal effect by some on some. There we have crimimal behaviours within the structure of society. A societal injury requires societal treatment.

    In the political arena, we are at the mercy of those we elect (or elected by majority, whether we voted there or not). Change can oly be effected by the majority lobbying and voting. In the societal arena, any one of us can make a difference and take a lead in making change.

    The great problem for Afghanistan and India at the moment is that these two things have been conflated. The unholy union of religion and state - the most 'ungodlike' of situations. Very difficult to see this ending in anything short of tragedy... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 17, 2021 at 12:47 PM

      Even the US media doesn't seem happy about what their country did to Afghanistan. They took over Afghanistan from the Taliban 20 years ago and now handed it back to them just like that. What was the point of all those exercises and killings? I can't understand this kind of power-games. "International disgrace," indeed. It's time the world took serious actions against this sort of things.

      Yes, again, we are the mercy of the very people whom we elect to power. Bregman is right: Democracy is not the government of the people but of the elected leaders. And if the leaders are useless, what can the people do?

      Delete
  2. ArtiAugust 18, 2021 at 2:51 PM

    You've said it as it is.
    Watching the events unfold, it feels like we're speeding towards our own end with our eyes closed.
    Fundamentalism, as you've said, is exactly like an avalanche.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 18, 2021 at 6:25 PM

      I have been questioning religion itself for many years precisely because of its misuse like this. The good done by religions seems so insignificant in comparison.

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरAugust 20, 2021 at 3:46 PM

    Agree with every word of your article. It's agonizingly astonishing that the world at large (including the so-called progressive countries as well as the UN) appears to be silently supporting Taliban.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 20, 2021 at 3:59 PM

      I think the West is just washing its hands off the entire mess they created in the first place.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more