Country of Hatred

 

In a poem titled ‘Love of Country,’ Malayalam poet Balachandran Chullikkadu wrote:

            In the beginning there were no countries.

            In the beginning was the word.

            Then water, and then life.

            Then countries came

            And love vanished.

A few lines later, the poet asks:

            Where are the borders of solitude?

            Where the soul’s lines of control?

            What I seek is not love of country,

            But a country of love.

            An empire of life.

I happened to read an interview of this poet in the latest issue of Deshabhimani weekly published by CPI(M). He says that writers are really helpless in shaping people’s thoughts and attitudes. He cites an example from the time of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. Many writers including him questioned Emergency and Indira’s dictatorship in their poems and other writings. But people elected her to power again.

Writers make little impact on ordinary people. People are swayed by the rhetoric of politicians and the mumbo jumbo of the religious. This is truer than ever in contemporary India. See how political as well as religious leaders mislead millions of people easily in India now. Blatant lies are accepted as truths. Absolute fraudulence is embraced by people happily as historical facts. Hatred is preached by people in power and, worse, by religious leaders. And that hatred is accepted as virtue by incredibly large numbers of people. 

Balachandran Chullikkadu

Rama’s story, which is nothing more than good fiction, is passed of as real history and a whole nation is going to be founded on that fiction which belongs to a period called Treta Yuga which is nothing more than myth. Balachandran says that in his interview. Don’t pounce on me now for quoting him. He goes on to argue that the Sangh Parivar is forging a culture based on a messy admixture of umpteen falsehoods and myths and assumptions. It is a fake culture that rejects a lot of historical facts and truths including the protean varieties of miscegenation that created the Indians of today. There are no pure Indians of any particular race. There are many bloods, many cultures, many races that went into the shaping of the present Indians. Sangh Parivar turns a blind eye to too many truths while foisting endless falsehoods on the people in the name of some imagined pure race. Pity.

The world has started taking note of this now, thanks to silly people like Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal. Nupur and Naveen are just symbols. The real rot is lying much deeper in the Indian polity. India has become a cancerous country. It’s going to be a tough job for any good leader to usher in the much-needed radiation therapy.