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. Perfect conclusion to the series...

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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. Poltergeist 😅 The similarity is not only in sound!

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

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  7. 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. 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

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

Coming-of-Age Poems

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...

How to preach nonviolence

Like most government institutions in India, the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has also become a gigantic joke. The national surveyors of India’s famed antiquity go around finding all sorts of Hindu relics in Muslim mosques. Like a Shiv Ling [Lord Shiva’s penis] which may in reality be a rotting piece of a Mughal fountain. One of the recent discoveries of Modi’s national surveyors is that Sambhal in UP is the birthplace of Kalki, the tenth incarnation of God Vishnu. I haven’t understood yet whether Kalki was born in Sambhal at some time in India’s great antique history or Kalki is going to be born in Sambhal at some time in the imminent future. What I know is that Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu that is going to put an end to the present wicked Kali Yuga led by people like Modi Inc. Kalki will begin the next era, Satya Yuga, the Era of Truth. So he is yet to be born. But a year back, in Feb to be precise, Modi laid the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalk...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Triumph of Godse

Book Discussion Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in order to save Hindus from emasculation. Gandhi was making Hindu men effeminate, incapable of retaliation. Revenge and violence are required of brave men, according to Godse. Gandhi stripped the Hindu men of their bravery and transmuted them into “sheep and goats,” Godse wrote in an article titled ‘Non-resisting tendency accomplished easily by animals.’ Gandhi had to die in order to salvage the manliness of the Hindu men. This argument that formed the foundation of Godse’s self-defence after Gandhi’s assassination was later modified by Narendra Modi et al as: “ Hindu khatre mein hai ,” Hindus are in danger. So Godse has reincarnated now.   Godse’s hatred of non-Hindus has now become the driving force of Hindutva in India. It arose primarily because of the hurt that Godse’s love for his religious community was hurt. His Hindu sentiments were hurt, in other words. Gandhi, Godse, and the minority question is the theme of the...