To India,
The way the world has been and continues to be, it is now very well accepted that History repeats itself. “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances” is what Shakespeare said quiet rightly. We have been acting on the stage under the light of the same Sun under which Mahabharata was fought, under the light of which Plassey and Buxar happened. We tend to forget the lessons soon and plunge into the same situations that were there at some point in the past. Nature gave us a volatile memory, and there lies the seed from which the sense of humor of the nature blooms. The current affairs in the Nation and abroad made me trifled and annoyed to foresee the chaos that is inevitable on the soil of my country. From theism to atheism, from Vedanta to antagonism, from physical to meta physical I forced my conscience to travel a long and painful tavern of conflicting ideologies, in my bid to understand my purpose of my life on the individual levels and the essence in human lives and society on the social levels. There is a lot left to be read and learnt on my behalf as of today, but there are few things that I have sensed by now – the answer about the essence of life is not much beyond the question itself, ‘why to live?’ The very question is complete in explaining the nature of life. No other animal other than man probably contemplates over the essence of its life. Man is virtuous animal and he will constantly seek peace and meaning in life. But as I said earlier, the nature’s sense of humor is such that it keeps playing with men and keeps setting up stages where chaos and tragedies repeat themselves.
The present day India, is a place where nature seems to be putting in lots of efforts for setting up a classic stage for a historic tragedy to be able to repeat itself. The way the sentiments of people took Anna Hazare’s movement from the demand of Lokpal bill to “India against corruption” and is still forging ahead questioning the Indian constitutional structures, with Mr. Arvind Kejriwal declaring Anna above parliament are just the waves of a future shock awaiting us. The recent news that how a medical student turned jihadist and master minded the 7th September, Delhi High court bomb blast, indicates the forces working against the national harmony. The media has left no stone unturned in a bid of getting 24x7 viewership for better TRP, by many a times, over disdaining the image of the political leaders. I pity our senior political leaders, who are time and again confronted by the media questioning their legitimacy. The present generation seems to have no faith in the constitutional bodies. The pseudo intellectuals at my college for instance, would sit ideally throughout the day, doing nothing and blaming the governmental policies for every other thing. Healthy opposition of the government is what I great democracy must move ahead with, but the lazy crowd of our nation who are putting very few efforts in improving their own characters are busy criticizing the leaders and voting keeping in mind the cast, creed and ethnicity of the candidates during elections. One might wonder how long a civilization can sleep before being jolted by fatal blows of time. The fact that there are corrupt politicians and there needs to be a mechanism to bring the powerful and influential on the balance of fair justice is very well accepted by any member of the civil society but if a change, how so ever small, comes at the cost of disfiguring the constitutional structure, then it will be detrimental to the freedom of the nation in longer run. With our Honorable prime minister asking to revise the RTI act, we can sense the severity of the threat a compromise with the constitutional structure might cause to the nation.
The country is facing many menaces today. The young generation of the country is looking for employment, the farmers seeking subsidies, different sects, tribes etc seeking equality, Roa and supporters asking for a new state - Telangana, Irom Sharmila seeking removal of AFSPA in Manipur, Maoists looking to topple the democracy, the middle class seeking control on the inflation, the global slowdown threatening the growth at home, neighboring countries ready to dismantle the peace of the region, the poor looking for helping hands, the government fighting the global deficit and many more. The public in general is not content and all the blame is pointed towards the government. If we see the actions of our government post 1991, we will see that the transition of our country from a slow moving Nehruvian socialism to fast growing economy of Dr. Manmohan’s neo-liberalism has brought a lot of reviving air, much needed in to our nation (with its ever increasing population and thus the basic needs). China could grow up to its full strength only when, the whole nation united in its effort for fighting the poverty and sensing the humiliation their country faced for a century and a half at the hands of imperial forces, under the leadership of Mao Zedong. India on the other had has been ever complaining and never realizing what it keeps at stake when it questions the liability of its own selected government. There is surely a void in the political arena of leadership after the departure of our fore fathers. Anna has come up as a hope for the people, but I fear the direction our future might turn into if Anna fail to handle the momentum which the nation has potential of generating.
Like the game of cards, every nation sets its trump card at the time of its realization. Our nation has set Gandhi as its trump card and is the sole hope, left in me, that consoles me that the future of my nation won’t see the bloodbaths the middle-east has seen and continues to. A revolt from one set or a groups of forces might outrage our nation in future, but we can always come up with our humane face and face the tragedies about to fall on us with the trump card of Gandhi in our hands instead of swords. Gandhi is a powerful concept. Anne Frank, who wrote a dairy while she was hiding in a confinement with her Jew family in Germany, at one point puts her dying hope upon a ‘thin man from India called Gandhi’ hoping that he might have brought an end to the atrocities of Hitler. Such was the affect and the charm of our beloved Baapu. In another instance I would like to quote what Mohsen Makhmalbaf(an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer) said about Mosavi (an Iranian reformist politician, artist and architect who served as the seventy-ninth and last Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989.) "Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he's a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we're having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy."
India is safe and shall never see the blood bath politics like Libya, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Israel etc. till the time the lessons of the “thin man” are alive with the people. But I will like to reiterate the sense of humor of the nature and under the light of the present day intolerant, biased and pseudo intellectual society (mainly the youth) India is quite vulnerable to disruption of the general peace that prevails in this part of the world.
I hope we do not forget our trump card and use it wisely instead of rising up to agitations as there are many forces that might come up with seemingly judicious agitations but very grave and consequential but hidden ideologies. We must not forget the lesson from the revolutions that took place in not very far off countries to which the general public rose to support expecting peace in future but all they got was deceit and even more autocratic rulers leading to graver plight. We must not be agitated by the news every now and then, rather we must work hard at our own levels resting our belief in the constitutional bodies atleast, if not in the leaders for the time being. Ours’ is a great country and we are a peace loving population, our harmony hurts many and we must be vigilant to their deceitful acts. The constitutional framework of the country is fair enough and flexible enough to eliminate any threat from the society but for it to function properly the faith of the people in it is a necessary requirement.
With love,
Chakresh
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