A well-timed realisation

Sometimes you have to nearly die to discover the meaning of life.

Dalit-Muslim-Tribals Vs. Brahamanical Hinduism

Pseudoism is the art and craft of using a positive emotion, feel-good verb, or a relaxing sentiment, picking its hypothetical meaning in letter, and grafting it over the mean spirit. The spirit to dominate, to manipulate, to rule at any cost, the end justifying the means. It becomes a blindfolding instrument. No wonder, pseudoism is a suitable device with power aspirations particularly. Pseudo-secularists have cashed minority fears. The stroke inexistent phobias. They want the minority to stay scared. They keep the apprehensions and insecurities alive, to turn these into votes at the election time.  Now is the turn of pseudo-nationalists. The latter create a rhetorical stage, offering people a feeling to contribute to the nation. It’s a stage set for papery heroism, where one can contribute to national glory without putting anything at stake, without any risks either. It’s a goody goody dream-world. You shout slogans, you pour hate on social media, you condone the acts of violence against your target, you claim to be more patriotic than others. That’s it. You need not do more. Shouting amidst the frenzied crowd, like it’s a picnic outing and this a new entertainment game, is all that it takes to be a nation-builder. You are supposed to stand to the national anthem before the movie starts. You do it and you are a patriot. Doesn’t matter if straightaway after that you elbow the girl in the next seat, or rub your leg against hers on the pretext of extending your limbs out of boredom. These liberties and many more. You can be a simple law-breaking chit of a human being in scores of daily routine, like violating traffic rules, passing lewd remarks at women, scattering garbage, peeing in the open. All this doesn’t matter as long as you ride the bandwagon of pseudo-nationalism. It’s very easy to fall in this trap. Who doesn’t want to keep the belief that he/she is contributing to nation building. Feelings apart, only a little section can do actually so in practice. Rest can take this sip in the meow meow on offer on the stage of populist rhetoric. This risk-free nationalistic spirit but comes at a big cost. Little do people realize that by the time they are still enjoying the echo of their slogans, they have already crossed a line to enter a zone of practiced mass-hate. They are getting trained for being less loving, less tolerant, and hence lesser human beings than they could have been otherwise. Even before they realize the slightest change, they have already surrendered a part of their good self. They are smaller than they were before. Something gets cut off from the real self. They get polarized. The vision is skewed, not open-minded exuberance required for healthy mind and creative spirit. They are just a diminished self of their former self. The society gets a fracture. It's painful. The current wave of pseudo-nationalism led by the Brahamanical Hindu resurgence has many takers, especially the younger generations. Not surprisingly. When hormones are yet to stabilize, the stage is shaking, the world is a shaky vision, they, the youngsters, need to pour out their straying energies. Papery nationalism is a suitable means. It makes them paper tigers. They are exploring. They get the pill, pick it up, savour it. It’s tasty. It’s even better than alcohol in fogging the mind into delusions. They thunder and roar against imaginative foes. They hunt down invisible enemies of the state through hate speech, by clapping stray killings here and there, by condoning acts of violence, arson and shouts here and there. Brahamanical Hindu led pseudo-nationalism is particularly trying at the communal level. Islamo-phobia is the common ground in the strategy. Little do they realize that within the Hindu society itself, there are sections that have been exploited for thousands of years by their own co-religioners. Dalits and tribals, the frozen class, with fates frozen at the sub-human levels for generations, have as much to grudge over caste-based exploitation, discrimination and humiliation, as a fundamentalist Islamist might have against other religions. Dalit-Muslim-Tribals, the super-entity which can easily identify with discrimination, have much in common in terms of discrimination, systematic second-hand treatment and exploitation. In Indian politics, there are permutations and combinations of caste and communal identities. These shift over and acquire strange shapes. The latest can be Dalit-Muslim-Tribals. Muslims safely ensconced in the trio. The lethality of Islam-phobia melting in the historical wrongs against the frozen class in the Indian society. Some strange mutant of Congress, leftists and other non-BJP regional parties can be formed. Overblown Brahamanical Hinduism, having the exploitation of its own lower society as the core, can fuel a new trend in political jugglery.

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.