Some New Year Thoughts

 

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This is the last post of the year 2021. The year that is dying hasn’t been particularly cheery. The pandemic hampered most movements. I would have loved to visit a lot of places as I had planned earlier. Worst of all, classes went online and I now have a whole batch of students whose faces I won’t recognise if I meet them somewhere.

Two events of the year that worry me largely are not personal, however. They are about the nation. Both happened recently. One: the Haridwar hate speeches. Two: Cutting off foreign donations to Mother Teresa’s Charity and the attacks on Christian churches on Christmas day.

These are all interrelated events. India has become a nation of haters and hatemongers. Most tragically, ascetics have become the foulest citizens spewing venom against minority communities. And the government is just mute. None of the authorities from the Prime Minister to the chief ministers of various states where the hate speeches and attacks took place have bothered to make a statement about the nefarious incidents. When a government that enjoys a ‘brutal’ majority tacitly supports hate, the country is sure to degenerate into miseries of all sorts.

My fervent hope for 2022 is that the national degeneration is arrested.

That is a chimeric wish as long as the leaders of the country themselves want hate to be spread. I pray to all the 33 million gods of the pantheon to bring enlightenment to our leaders in the New Year.

When I was in Delhi, I used to visit an institution called Prem Daan which was run by the nuns of Mother Teresa. The institution housed about a hundred people who suffered from various forms of mental disability. The selfless service rendered by the nuns impressed me every time I visited them to offer a small donation. Some students of the school where I worked also used to visit the institution under the leadership of a teacher called Surender Sharma as part of a social awareness programme. The students were all Hindus as was the teacher. They offered donations generously. Any visitor would be moved by the kind of service the nuns performed there. Only those who were motivated by something beyond this earth could carry out the kind of work that the nuns did. Why would any government think of cutting off the financial supports to such remarkable humanitarian services?

Motives make all the difference. What you do becomes great or mean, noble or ignoble, by your motive. I have always suspected Mr Modi’s motives when it comes to affairs related to religions. A lot of good gets suppressed because of his motives. A lot of evil is promoted also by them.

I wish the New Year will bring more sense to some of our leaders.

Wish you Happy New Year.