Pseudo-nationalism and the seeds of poison

So the pseudo-nationalists are nurturing hate. They are sowing its seeds in young minds. In big volume and at an alarming rate. The seeds are sprinkled on the fertile soil of social media. Youngsters are conveniently taking bites. It’s exciting like having pizza and girl/boy-friend. They are mixing it with post-modern popular culture. Quit strangely, in the pot on boil, where differences are expected to melt to a integrated mass, differences are burning at different temperatures. Hate is a convenient tool to blind one to logic and sanity. Consumed by hate one is just a part of the human being he/she is otherwise. It combusts the basic moisture of being a humane. Some core of goodness evaporates. Before dividing communities and individuals, it fractionalizes the carrier of hate itself. As the rhetorical juggernaut carried by the agents of pseudo-nationalism—as funny, quirky and politically self-seeking as the pseudo-secularists—moves on, divisions in the Indian society take even more dangerous turns. People beating those not ready to stand up to the national anthem, mobs lynching the rumored beef carriers, ABVP members attacking a literary gathering at Ramjas college where somebody might have expressed a different point of view. These are as petty and self-seeking pills of intoxication, as are the mild dose of self-gratifying sips popped in by pseudo-secularists. The sky-high stack of the fodder of division in the Indian society is always pining for the matchlock of somebody’s ambition. It then bursts forth. It explodes. People suffer, but someone gets power. Hate has been the instrument of Indian political system, as much as it was responsible for partition at the time of independence. Hate as a power-grabbing instrument has been the favorite tool of ruling aspirants. Jinnah stroked the division on religious grounds and ran away with a new country itself. Political parties have ruled the roost over decades just by stamping caste, creed, communal and regional identities through pandering divisiveness, by boosting hate, by augmenting distrust. The famed Indian diversity is always a cache of ammunition. It’s a pile of divisions lying there to catch fire and blast. Waiting for some power aspirant’s matchbox of ambition. To fuel divisions. To pamper insecurities. To turn people blind and crazy. Much as Hindu pseudo-nationalists try to sow seeds of distrust into the fiery souls of the younger generation, they hardly realize cultivation of hate cannot be compartmentalized for a particular community only. Grooming of hate in an individual changes the character over all. Its repercussions are not just limited to the targeted community. It crosses the immediate object to seep over into life generally, into interpersonal relationships, views on life. It breeds an insecure, selfish persona, who isn’t just apt in spewing out angry rhetoric against the targeted community, but who is equally bitter in dealing with people of his own community. Division by hate is a chain reaction. It consumes all. It doesn’t just stop at the first line of the targeted community. It spreads further to gobble up all at the next stages. The identity-based political parties of India but just take interest in the immediate line of division. It gets them votes. It perpetuates their goal of sticking to power. Little do they realize that by breeding a culture of hate, division and distrust they are letting loose a fire that consumes the ethos of a healthy society. It eats the basics of a strong social system. It lets loose an ever-smoldering fire that takes its toll over decades. It kills dreams. It stifles the openness and exuberance of character capable of doing good to others as much as it means for the self. Building roads, boosting infrastructure, strengthening manufacturing are as much important as a healthy society. The former are for the latter, and not vice versa. It’s high time that pseudo-nationalists realize the futility of rabble rousing in a divided house. If they really want a strong India, they should sow the seeds of love, receptivity and accommodation. Hate-mongering is terribly counter-productive. It’s as good as just to put the ruling seat under your bum. After that it evil effects go across the society, where the divisions of caste, class and creed do not matter. All suffer.       

Self-seekers

Starting with my friend's message. A metro ride this morning on her way to office:

"Started my day on a good note by offering my seat to a heavily pregnant woman....she was leaning against the pole and looking so exhausted at the start of the day....such robust young and old men, shameless enuf not to even ask whether she wud sit...they just pretend not to have seen....such small things tell u to what extent people r selfish for their own comfort....

Even other women are so insensitive....looking away so that they don't hav to offer a seat...."

Well that proves my diagnosis of commonest of common Indian trait of petty selfishness. A result of too much of population for ever falling short resources, I suppose. Everything falls short of expectations. Metros, buses, roads, jobs, bread, butter, the endless list. People just never have enough. It breeds discontentment. A sinister apathy for the cause of the fellow sufferers in the crowd creeps in. It narrows the vision. It clogs the spirit. You just cannot see beyond the small platform of your own struggle. It breeds very unhealthy personalities. Clinging to their own little grabs is the skill they get versed in over years in their lives. Then it becomes a very selfish mass. The terrible self-seekers. Incapable of grasping the civic sense of any cause that lies outside their own. People get basically so absorbed in their own world that the senses which allow them to perceive the world around don't work at all when it comes to fellow human beings. It is criminally callous. This attitude. Indians seem to be very tiny hearted. There are hundreds of little incidents daily which prove it more and more.

Grains of Truth

There doesn't seem to be a universal truth. If at all it exists, it is still lost in the infinite cosmic spread. All we have is the scattered grains of perceived truths. My truth, your truth, his truth, her truth, their truth. Bits and pieces of truth, picked up for convenience, for suitability. Truth is a mundane piece of daily utility, as much suitable as the food we take as per our body types and socio-economic circumstances. Forget about the most justifiable of truths. The most we can do is to get an average of all truths, a mathematical average, a common truth. But my truth can be false for someone else, and vice versa. Truth and falsehood, recurring shadow and substance. Sometimes falsehood is the shadow. Oftentimes truth is the shadow. But they are always nearby. Touching each other like the shadow clings to the substance. Both have their suitors simultaneously. Someone holds the substance for support. At the same time someone takes shelter in the shadow to cling to his utility.

Jat-Muslim combine in Haryana

As much as Congress meant corruption, BJP means 'bhai chara bigado'. The latter has to aggravate social tensions in the Indian society. India's has been a highly segregated society. The caste system created a highly compartmentalized society, so much so that the exploitation of the lower castes passes off as a God-ordained system of lower and higher karma. India is at least half a century away from a casteless society. It will not be possible before that to rid Indian society from this ancient scourge. Simply because democracy here and the political parties set up on caste and communal lines need the system of discrimination to survive ad excel in politics. The BJP thrives on polarization, the oldest mantra with rulers. They divide along any line of separation visible. Like in UP, where it is Muslims and Hindus, in Haryana they have smartly allowed Hindu society to be divided as Jats and nonjats. They are eyeing 74% of nonjats. February last year the govt didn't do anything to stop Jats from destroying properties of nonjats. They wanted a violent episode, an episode of loss of life and property and most importantly Bhai chara, to keep the fire of divisiveness among Jats and nonjats burning. Jats have now literally become Hindu-Muslims of Haryana, almost hated by nonjats enblock. BJP's shock tactics of dividing society means at least I am far more moderate than earlier. With corruption Congress tainted the very soul of Indian democracy. Let's see where polarizing forces let loose by BJP take us. It can be far more lethal for Indian society. One more thing, Jats may find bonhomie with Muslims of Southern Haryana. Both have there own set of real and imaginary woes against BJP. It will take the total Jat-Muslim combine above 30%, a formidable force. The politics of pupulistic rhetoric, BJP's trademark, may not find many takers in Haryana because the most suitable section culpable to be swayed by sentimental rhetoric, the Jats, given their ever-on-the edge temperament and raw attitude, is feeling left out in the opposite corner in BJP's scheme of polarization.  

The women of France under Nazi shadows

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. It's a criminal act. A lethal abstract. It cannot be reversed. Spinning out of hate, lust and greed, and all the wrong colors of the soul. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that. Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice. For crimes, where man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, religious and racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. These are the black holes. They suck any semblance of justice. It spins in its own gory world of hate and blood. No light of justice escapes. It's just a dark monolith, a crime. A massive wrong. Forget about mankind's justice, even the wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice. Does it mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever. Just waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. A song of humanity amidst mass crime. A ray of hope for the lost. A redemption for the innocent millions who were wiped out because they attracted the greatest affliction of human mind, someone's hate. A depiction of human hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France in second world war. France is virtually menless. Men are in prison. Women hold the baton of life. They have to keep love alive in their wombs. It's loss and loss everywhere. And monstrous brutalities. They have to hide fistful of love, of humanity, of forgiveness deep inside their tortured selves. It will be required to rebuild life after the devastation. All major destruction is caused by the criminal acts of men. It's for the women to pick up the scattered pieces and again make a home for man. For a husband, for parents, for children, for brother, for sister.

It's a dark cloud hanging over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who identify them as such are missing. They have to survive. When they can no longer fight to save their bodies, they fight to save their souls. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, food, shelter and the strong love of a woman, if at all they return after war. Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is still a better right then millions of wrongs by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, The women of France keep the torch alive. Beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility in times to come, an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than wildest dreams, In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Read this masterwork by Kristin Hannah. It might help you in being a still better human being. A more loving person .