Skip to main content

Zeitgeist


This is the last post in the A-to-Z series that I have been writing in April. Most of the posts in the series touched explicitly or implicitly the post-truth politics of present India. Post-truth is the zeitgeist of India now. Facts don’t matter here. Emotions do. Slogans do. We have a Prime Minister who loves to play with words. He keeps on giving us new slogans every year, if not more frequently. Remember slogans or jingles like Achhe din aane waale hain? Make in India (which has now become Break in India), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Minimum Government Maximum Governance, Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas… Hollow slogans. That has been the zeitgeist of India from 2014. Hollow. Resounding hollowness.

What is the reality behind those slogans and rhetoric? I found the following illustration from a Malayalam weekly the most apt depiction of our present reality. 


You know what it means. A thickly populated area in the national capital is bulldozed after Mr Modi’s supporters orchestrated a riot-like situation there. Some 200-odd people carrying tridents and rods march into the area playing high decibel music on a DJ system under the pretext of celebrating Hanuman Jayanti. Why choose a place like Jahangirpuri for such a celebration? You know the answer. It was a tailor-made communal clash. Tailor-made communal clashes are integral parts of present India’s zeitgeist. I bet we can expect many more of them soon.

If you think Modi and his supporters are the only people who are possessed by this zeitgeist you are mistaken. Kejriwal is going out of the way to own that spirit. He has suddenly become a Hanuman bhakt. He visits Hanuman temples, sings Hanuman chalisa there, and arranges Sundara Kanda of Ramayana to be recited in the temples of his constituency.  

Rahul Gandhi also flirted with gods for a while. Since he doesn’t know the game, it didn’t work. Nothing works in his case. Poor man in a wrong place. He doesn’t understand the zeitgeist at all.

While the hollow zeitgeist marches on holding tridents and rods, the country is reeling under price rise, ever-increasing taxes, unemployment, poverty, and overall misery. Nobody in the ruling party seems concerned. They are concerned about Rama and Hanuman. Zeitgeist of GST Raj. 


Last month the Gujarat High Court remarked that it was easier to reach the moon than understand the intricacies of the GST tax system. The truth is that the entire politics of Narendra Modi is beyond any human understanding. May the 33 million gods of our pantheon save us!

PS. This is the last part of #BlogchatterA2Z

Comments

  1. magiceyeApril 30, 2022 at 11:32 AM

    Perfect conclusion to the series...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Afshan ShaikApril 30, 2022 at 3:52 PM

    Zeitgeist a new word for me almost sounds like "Poltergeist" if u know what I mean. I was wondering what u would write as an end post. This is like a perfect epilogue to all ur remaining posts. It was good knowing u and ur blog...


    Congrats on completing a to z. From "The Pensive"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 30, 2022 at 4:28 PM

      Poltergeist 😅 The similarity is not only in sound!

      Hope you will return to this space occasionally though A2Z is over.

      Delete
  3. Yamini MacLeanApril 30, 2022 at 5:30 PM

    Hari OM
    Yes, a good roundup to conclude this month's offerings... and I wish it only pertained to India (no disprespect), but we have a completely scary situation here in the UK (I haven't dared look to see how OZ is shaping up). Ours is not comparable in the misuse of religious application, but there is so much going on under the table and folk appear to be totally blind to the encroachment on freedoms. Fascism is alive and swelling...

    Thanks for an entertaining, engaging and enthralling April - now keep it going!!! YAM xx
    Z=Zany

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 30, 2022 at 7:49 PM

      April became richer with your presnce here, Yam. You made this space international. Your comments added to my interest in the world beyond Delhi.

      Delete
  4. Janaki/Ishaan SaiApril 30, 2022 at 6:44 PM

    Can't agree more. And in the absence of a strong opposition this will continue. Hope our 33 million God's help our country with a strong opposition and get us out of this circus!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 30, 2022 at 7:52 PM

      Lack of opposition is detrimental even to gods, as our scriptures show. Modi is scaling heights that he doesn't even understand. A big fall is imminent.

      Delete
  5. Prasanna RaghavanApril 30, 2022 at 8:22 PM

    Oh well, how nicely your post captures the spirit of India of the present. But that spirit embodied in the facades of those muppathimukkodi gods of India were constructed India, not originated there!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 30, 2022 at 8:54 PM

      A constructed India, you said it. Orchestrated, as I put it in the post. Fabrications.

      Delete
  6. GBMay 1, 2022 at 6:57 PM

    Lovely! I love reading your posts. One of the few people who speak the real truth in a world filled with deception.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuMay 2, 2022 at 11:01 PM

    The situation is grim and the economic crisis is really to worry about. I could not stop laughing after reading the last line ! Amazing write , as always.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Deepa from FictionPiesMay 5, 2022 at 7:20 PM

    It's almost as if several in our populace are waiting with bated breath, more of a wait and watch game to see how the country shapes up in the coming decades. So much of 'Zeitgeist' (a new word for me!) becomes game changes, or rather a fork in the road. The whole world seems to be going crazy.

    Cheers,
    Deepa from FictionPies

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
11 comments
Read more