Claws tearing the Lotus in Muddied Waters

 There is a very nice story. During not so old days, cattle thieves played a really professional trick on unsuspecting farmers. Before untying the animal, they used to take the neck bell off. Then one thief made off with the tinkling bell in one direction. Rest of them took buffalo in the opposite direction. Poor villagers pursued the sound. The bell-bearing thief then dropped the bell and would just scamper away in the dark. The poor folks would get the quintessential ghanta and the thieves ran way with cattle and buffalo.

Our politicians do the same to we poor folks. Our cattle comprises education, health, sanitation, employment, security, electricity, law and order, women empowerment, transport, clean water, and so many common things needed to lead a decent life. But then the smart tricksters mislead us with the tinkling bells of Temple-Mosque, Hindu-Muslim, Dalit-Swarna, Bihari-Marathi, etc., etc. So running after the chiming bells of these hyperbolic notes of the bell, the netas sneak out with public money meant for our cattle listed above.

Yours truly literally gets cowardly goose-bumps even at the mention of the word ‘politician’. Still I take tiny pot-shots from a safe distance sometimes just to assuage the feeling that I didn’t do anything while the super-species took away our buffalo. So off and on I have my funny conceptualizations about the political game. Not that I believe in the practicality of my expertise. I fully know that the politicians start to think at a point where your humble colleague in misery stops after giving a full stretch to his imagery. Well, that defines the equation between the ruler and the ruled.

In my poor capacity, I try to make out my understanding of the two major political forces in the country. As much as Congress means systematic, well-oiled corruption, BJP means 'bhai chara bigado'. The former is always there to allow as much plundering of public resources as possible through newest means. The latter, on the other hand, has to aggravate social tensions in the Indian society. India's has been a highly segregated society. It’s always hot. You just need to raise the temperature a bit to boil the thing. The caste system has 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 I suppose is at least half a century away from becoming a casteless society. It doesn’t seem possible before that to rid the Indian society from this ancient scourge, simply because Indian democracy presently survives on socio-economic, cultural, religious, caste, communal and regional divisions. These are the potent wheels that pull the juggernaut march.

The political parties set up on caste, communal and regional lines need the system of discrimination to survive and excel in politics. The Congress thrives by pandering the tiny evil flickering in the self-seeking masses, turning a blind eye to the short-cuts by the smallest to the biggest, giving them a feeling of milking the cow. It simply makes everybody a partner in the crime.

The BJP thrives on polarization, the oldest mantra with rulers. They divide society along any line of separation visible. Like in UP, where it is Muslims and Hindus, in Haryana they have smartly allowed the Hindu society to be divided as Jats and non-Jats. They are eyeing 74% of non-Jats. Looking at the mass scale vandalism during job reservation stir by Jats, there are many who allege that the government didn't do anything to stop Jats from destroying the properties of non-Jats. 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 non-Jats burning.

Jats have now literally become Hindu-Muslims of Haryana, almost hated by non-Jats enblock. The 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 the Indian society.

One more thing, Jats may find bonhomie with Muslims of Southern Haryana. Both have their 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 populist 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.  So the strategy now is to divide Jat vote bank among different parties so that their political effectiveness gets diluted.

Well, as the elections come to the fore, it appears a divided house full of hate, mistrust and mudslinging. It makes me very sad. But well, as they say Lotus smiles from the mud. But then getting muddied before the proverbial Kamal shines above the dirty waters is very discomforting.  

Pseudo-somethings and the Seeds of Poison

 

Charles de Gaulle: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

There is a very restless breed in our society. Its blood boils like in a revolution. It firmly wants to believe that they are up for an uprising. Gone are the days of blinding fury that engulfed society in fire and fury. The fire now smolders slowly at a temperature where thankfully there is less blood, but more battles of words, opinions and fake wars.

I call them pseudo-somethings. And mind you, they are not the prerogative of one political party. All national and regional parties have their fair share of pseudo-somethings. So we have pseudo-secularists, pseudo-nationalists, pseudo-liberals, pseudo-idealists, etc., etc. Put any positive, healthy ism into political waters and it will turn into pseudo-something.

Pseudo-centrists, pseudo-leftists, pseudo-nationalists and all other pseudo-somethings nurture 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 an integrated mass, differences are burning at different temperatures making a very weird concoction.

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 humane. The 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-X—as funny, quirky and politically self-seeking as the pseudo-antiX—moves on, divisions in the Indian society take even more dangerous turns.

Pseudo-nationalists beating those not ready to stand up to the national anthem, mobs lynching the rumored beef carriers, and student organisation members attacking a literary gathering at a Delhi 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 the ruler aspirants. Jinnah stroked the division on religious grounds and ran away with a new country itself. Political parties have ruled the roost over the decades just by stamping caste, creed, communal and regional identities through pandering divisiveness, boosting hate and 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, pamper insecurities, and turn people blind and crazy.

Much as pseudo-nationalists try to sow seeds of distrust into the fiery souls of the younger generation, they hardly realize that 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 and the overall philosophy of 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 the people of his own community. Fire and hate hardly differentiate among caste, creed, community and religion after a point. They just start from one specific target to eat into a person’s character like termites eat a healthy tree’s roots.

Division by hate is a chain reaction. It consumes all. It doesn’t simply 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 merely 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 and strengthening manufacturing are as much important as a healthy society. The former are for the latter, not vice versa. It’s high time that pseudo-somethings 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. And fight elections on real issues related to the well being of the commonest of the common. Hate-mongering is terribly counter-productive. It’s as good as merely putting the ruling seat under your bum, completely ignoring its evil effects that go across the society, where the divisions of caste, class and creed do not matter. All suffer.

Pseudo-nationalism and Pseudo-secularism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

 

Pseudoism is the art and craft of using a positive emotion, feel-good factor, or a relaxing sentiment, picking its hypothetical meaning in letter, and grafting it over to hide the mean spirit. It is the spirit to dominate, to manipulate, and rule at any cost. Herein the much-cherished end solely justifies the means. It becomes a blindfolding instrument. No wonder, pseudoism is a suitable device with power aspirants particularly.

Pseudo-secularists have always cashed minority fears. They stroke almost inexistent phobias. They want the minority to stay scared and insecure about whatever the so called majority does. They keep the apprehensions and insecurities alive, and turn these into votes at the election time.  

Then it’s the turn of pseudo-nationalists. They create a rhetorical stage, offering people a feeling to contribute to nation-building. 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, and 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 or 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. It 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.

As a virtual patriot, you get countless liberties to offer your sacrifices for mother nation. 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 and 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 well-orchestrated 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 gets skewed. They lose the open-minded exuberance required for a healthy mind and creative spirit. They become just a diminished self of their former self. The society gets a fracture. It's painful. 

The current wave of pseudo-nationalism fuelled by the Brahamanical Hindu rhetoric has many takers, especially the younger generations. Not surprisingly though, on account of the fact that their hormones are yet to stabilize, the stage is shaking, and the world is mired in a wobbly vision. They, the youngsters, need to pour out their straying energies. Papery nationalism is a suitable means. It makes them paper tigers. They become valiant web-soldiers slaying opponents on the internet battlefield.

As per their growth hormones, they are exploring. They get the pill, pick it up, and savor 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 over stray mob lynching here and there, and by condoning acts of violence, arson and looting now and then. In effect, it simply trains them in petty criminality, which in certain cases turns a few of them into hardcore criminals.

To make it even more deplorable, pseudo-secularists’ blood doesn’t boil over the plight of the common man. In fact more the violence born of the rightists’ anger, the more they feel they have the fodder to burn in debates. I think whenever something nasty happens, pseudo-ideologies on both sides get excitedly itching at the same degree, because exactly this type of division ensures their existence. In fact they are the two sides of the same coin and cannot exist in isolation. So they co-exist and fuel the great power game among the groups on both sides. 

Brahamanical Hindu rightist led pseudo-nationalism is particularly trying at the communal level. And this onslaught means that the pseudo-secularism of the leftist and centrist affiliations stays relevant. They know that they exist as a pair, as antonyms. Their existence is in relation to each other. It’s a very simple game and they play it smartly to rule by turns as the frenzied masses sway from this side to the other.

Islam-phobia is the common ground in the rightist 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. Dalits, Muslims and Tribals, the super-entity that can easily identify with discrimination, have much in common in terms of inequity, 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 may be Dalit-Muslim-Tribals combo. 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 may come into effect. Overblown Brahamanical Hinduism, having the exploitation of its own lower society at the core, can fuel a new trend in political jugglery.

Not that it will push the Indian society towards social cohesiveness, love, peace and harmony. That unfortunately remains a distant dream because our democracy is currently fuelled by divisions in the society.

The Pied Piper and the Horde of Hungry Mice

 

Friday, August 25, 2017 earned its bit of dirty history. History by the way is concerned about its load only, good or bad doesn’t matter; these are our own interpretations to suit our purpose. So this particular day stands with its own load to carry down the ages: more than three dozen lives lost, hundreds injured, cars and vehicles burnt, media attacked and law and order shattered to pieces.

The moment Dera Chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim officially turned just a rapist human, a common criminal, named Gurmeet, his followers, shocked and not able to digest this humanly avatar of the demi-god, went on rampage in Panchkula around the CBI court that pronounced the judgment.

They were crying, pelting stones, burning whatever came their way, getting tear gas into their eyes, got struck by sticks, and finally absorbed bullets as well into their bind faith. Pitaji, beloved father as they call him, should have been allowed to stay beyond the normal laws for common people, they expected. Well, faith has no limits by the way.

It’s however another matter that it took 15 years and 200 hearings for justice to find its way out of the quagmire. Well, that’s understandable given the ways of stalling justice in the country, especially in the case of the strong and the mighty. Nonetheless, better late than never, it at least keeps common man’s faith in judiciary alive. So equipped with the empowering instructions of the court, we can safely call him a rapist now and address him by his maiden name, Gurmeet, instead of adding the golden-weighted superlatives before and after.

First it was Asha Ram Bapu, followed by Sant Rampal, some Ramvriksha Yadav in Mathura, and so many others who come to light almost on a daily basis for their not so holy deeds. Godmen, in the manner they can hijack the common rules and regulations of the land, are beyond the state. They have their own zone of sovereignty.

Simply to beat your head about this particular Baba and the ones named above would be equal to shedding tears over just one of the symptoms of a bigger malady. The question isn’t about why this particular Baba came to acquire such a cult status so as to challenge the state itself. It will be more pertinent to ask, why such Godmen are born in India. Every street, every locality, every village, town and city has its group of influential Godmen who dispel the evil, fetch the best of boons, destroy your enemies, get you what your hardest efforts could not and make you the luckiest person on earth. Your hard work, your perseverance, your education, skills and your penance for a cause coming at the bottom of the list required to get success or attain your goal.

In a country where there are billions squeezed for space, for a living, there are bound to be trillions of broken dreams, unmet goals and a huge galaxy of crowded aspirations. It’s plainly about people to resource ratio. More the people, the lesser the people to resource ratio, it’s simple mathematics. Life is robbed of living and a sinister struggle ensues. More fights, fewer smiles, seas of tears and deserts of unmet dreams.

In the muck of survival, all this comes down to be taken as being lucky or unlucky, while in reality one’s failure to achieve something is simply an impersonal, neutral denial on the scale of probability in a scene where hundred hands are trying to get one chapatti. Now, who get it and who don’t is beyond the laws of skill and logic. The 99 left out people, or 98, 97, 96, 95 or still less, on the basis of how many hands tear away a bit of the chapatti, have every reason to believe, on the basis of their effort, that there is some well-placed scheme as per the laws of pre-determination that has dislodged their chances in the grab game. They feel the lock of their kismet is jammed and the key has been cast somewhere into the unseen depths of the cosmos. Here come our pseudo-mystics. They claim to have the powers to find your key and open the age-old jammed, rusted lock to let loose a flood of fortunes. So out of the billions, with trillions of shattered dreams, millions go in groups to throw themselves at some holy feet in their respective regions.

Out of the trillion shattered dreams, millions are in anyway, due to the lifelong and the still ongoing struggle to survive, at the point of hatching some long-aspired fruit. Even the most skewed law of probability will give chance to millions out of trillions. The moment the chicken is hatched, which would have happened in any case irrespective of Baba x, y, z or no Baba at all, the Baba grabs the credit by default. The mathematics accumulates the load of appreciation, subtracts the unmet aspirations almost negligibly as the irremediable fruits of the sins of past life. The Baba has no onus to prove. He can take just the credit for the million savings out of the trillions of broken dreams.

In any case, one minus from Baba x means one plus to the followers of Baba y. It keeps on shifting till the hatching takes place either in this Baba’s court or that. The credit goes to the last Baba where the poor poultry cock or hen is caged with at the moment when at long last the trail of his/her drudgery has at least left some mark on the stage of life. However, it appears like a straight blessing instead of the fruit of efforts. People have abandoned hope by that time, despite all the continued hard work and pursuit of goal, and view the fruit of their own effort as the star of luck fetched by some Baba’s blessings.       

Beyond the trials and tribulation of a terribly overpopulated society, where deprivation is bound to prevail given the skewed people to resource ratio, there are other factors that boost a cult-man’s chances to acquire superhuman clout, wealth and influence.

The caste system in India means a major part of the society has been treated as subhuman species for thousands of years. This inherited poverty, deprivation and low socio-economic standing leaves a huge mass of people who, their fathers, father’s father, and so on, have been ill-treated like they are mere goats and pigs. As the casteless and creedless mass of a Baba’s followers, they feel equal like anyone else around. They feel like a full human being instead of mere fractions across the ages.

Like long drags on Bidis make them forgetful of the miseries of life, the visits to congregations and gatherings at ashrams make them feel unyoked from the heavy burden of the caste they carry. A low caste means you are low, always, it drones in your head, all the time. You are low, you are low, keep your head down, further low, smile even when he spits on your face, tweaks your ears, takes puns at you, flirts with your wife, leers at your sister, gives a kick at your poor ass to uplift his spirits, still you have to smile. You have to wear an unaffected mask, while the shitty life moves on.

Here, at the Guru’s feet, they put off their masks to get some fresh air. Now they become the real they. They cherish the taste of real self, un-lowed, unbound and untethered. Their crooked spines stretch to a new high. The slouching shoulders, the vestiges of lowness, square-up for some moments to feel like a bird getting its wings untied to fly. There is an ease like an unyoked beast of burden being allowed to run free in a pasture land. No wonder the followership crosses all limits in devotion and loyalty.   

Drunken husbands beating their wives and squandering away even their meager resources is the common most fact in the struggling section of society. Drugs and alcohol symbolize the worst form of evil to the poor women. No wonder, as the Babas at least ask their followers to refrain from drinking, the women feel they cannot have a bigger well-wisher. So you have miles-long queues of poor, condescending women, waiting to kiss the feet of the holy man, who is at least trying to make their men-folk quit drinking and correct their behavior.

Poverty has its alternate truths in a reversed world. When you decide to get healed just by the Baba’s touch, of course there will be some immediate improvement, which in any case becomes a miracle. It simply is Placebo effect. Psychologically you believe and the body responds positively. So the Babas shower healing blessings, the suffering masses have full faith in getting healed, and healed they get in some way or the other in the short term at least. It then becomes a necessity to keep the blessings going, no matter you keep taking medicines along the way, get treatment, spend money in hospitals, but once you decide that it is the effect of your Baba’s blessings, everything you do becomes a carrier, a mere instrument, of the holy man’s blessings.

The invisible, unknowable and unattainable God is too far. Convenience needs a Godhead nearby, whom you can see, touch his feet and kiss his robe. So the cult-men replace God. They are near and more effective than God himself. And people want their God to be nearer.   

At the management level, it’s primarily about money. Anything purportedly meant to do with religious financing is beyond the tax and revenue regime of the country. You just make a Hindu religious trust, you then govern your own financial destiny. The rules and regulations of India don’t have anything to do with this territory where all types of black, white, yellow and red money flow in unchecked torrents. And where there is unaccountable money, rest of the vices easily follow. With money you can easily become God.

You can keep people’s dreams alive by giving them only as much as a free lunch now and then. With your opulence and grand show, you can create stars in damn shitty famished eyes. It’s very easy to become the God of hungry, frustrated souls. There are millions to whom even a favor only to the extent of free weekend meals in a community feast is more significant than God himself. Money pulls the clout, it builds the loyalty. There is simply no other weightier factor. So with all the donations to religious trusts and gifts of land, gold, silver, dollar and rupees, beyond the pale of tax and revenue norms, within no time the Babas become super-rich. With money rest of the journey becomes very easy.  

Once they have billions of money with millions of cemented hungry loyalties around them, politicians come scavenging like dogs on dead bodies. Politicians are comfortable with mafia, murderers, smugglers, drug dealers and human traffickers, as long as they get votes for them.

The Rapist Baba has a long history of alliance with all the major political parties. A rape charge undertrial gets donations to the tune of crores of rupees by the Haryana government, the state’s ministers bow down to touch the Baba’s feet, the Chief Minister attends the Baba’s functions, what else the common people need to further convince themselves about the divinity of their father figure.

In every constituency the Baba has thousands of diehard supporters to whom matters of faith come to an end in the Baba’s thick beard. They are the ones who decide the winner and the loser during the state assembly elections. They donate money to the Baba, the Baba gives them some food and occasional shelter for devotional gatherings with the same money, the rest he uses in building a fleet of super-luxury cars and making movies in which he slays the evil as the messenger of God. The government makes his movies tax free so that the devotees feel flattered.   

A distant relative of mine fought the last assembly election in Haryana on the INLD ticket. However, the Baba, expecting a turnaround in his favor—he was facing a CBI inquiry—decided to go with the BJP. It was open support by the way. This INLD candidate lost by just 2 votes. He, belonging to the influential Jat community, who hold an arrogant clout in the social hierarchy, still cannot forget that night when he reached the poor house of an old man in his village. The old man was an OBC, lower in the caste hierarchy, but was rich in the number of votes. They were 8 in all in the little house. All would have been well, given the contestant’s dominant caste status and the fact that both parties stayed in the same village, and the OBC man being wise enough to know the adage, if you have to stay in the pond, don’t take panga with the crocodile.

It would have gone well if not for the fact that the poor family had eaten countless free lunches and dinners at the Baba’s dera, congregation halls, where frustrated females from the countryside get a chance to get out of the loops of patriarchy to have a casual fling, a paramour with some bites of free food. The numerous ashram branches, which purchased the followers’ loyalty apart from making Baba a symbol of God to them, served as one-stop point of entertainment, freedom, fling, food, frolic, faith and dignity.

With folded hands the old family patriarch, with tears in eyes, his voice shaking, said, “Chaudhri Sahab, you can kill us if you want, but we just cannot vote for you. It’s the order of our God.”

The poor Jat was defeated by two votes.

This is what makes the Babas like him so potent. Politically. And once you are so significant in the scheme of political things, the politicians of the land will even stoop so low as to touch the feet of a rape undertrial.

Only money can buy such loyalty. Make laws to stop religious funding that makes them mini-empires within the state. If you cannot do that, in greed of sheepish votes, then please stop cribbing about the Baba. There will be so many others following him.

Humanity Boiling in the Communist Cauldron

 

The more I read the facts and fiction of communist dictatorial regimes, the times when humanity faces a roadblock, the more I forget my own collective as well as personal pain here in India. I feel blessed to be born beyond the communist shadow. If God has been merciful enough not to cast you into a communist land in either this or previous births, then you have no right to ask for more. It’s already the best blessings from the Lord. It's a divine gift not to be born under the communist system. The biggest pains you feel in a non-communist regime appear like luxurious sprouts in comparison to the horrendous systemic tortures perpetrated on the masses under communist regimes.

So to me, as part of democracy, the smallest of gains look like the biggest boon. Not that democracy is perfect. It has its own sweet-sour set of nuisances. But these are lesser symptoms of non-fatal diseases like cough, cold, running nose, sneezing etc., etc. Communist dictatorship on the other hand is simply a terminator like incurable cancer. 

Mao Zedong: “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer that we use to crush the enemy.”  

Unfortunately, the enemy is always at hand. It is most of the time one’s next door neighbor. There is so much hate and distrust. There is an ever-persistent enemy of the state. One line purged, you redefine the meaning of state enemy, and purge the second line. It continues like this, waves of purging arrive like Tsunami. No wonder Mao Zedong and Stalin slaughtered millions of their own countrymen. These regimes stand as the epitomes of hate culture. And when love rarely matters in an epoch, it stands as the darkest phase.

The communist ideology is an all-pervading fire that doesn't spare either good or bad. Intended to burn the evil, it stretches the definition of evil too far and turns fiery evil itself. It's a huge stone hurtling down the slope, squashing leaves, saplings, petals, thorns and all. A fire needs fodder to burn. The communist ideology needs hordes of victims to survive. There is an endless chain of imagined enemies and hence successive waves of purges.

It's human industrialization wherein people are turned into machines and cogs in the production line. Looking at the ways and means of the emerging international bully, I’m afraid, at the end of it, the human civilization, despite its efforts at capitalist systems, will perish as a mechanical society controlled by the communist system. Nonetheless, such cataclysmic end should not make me skip my enjoyment of life in a democratic system.

Very often I wondered how the communist dictators built cult status with millions of blind followers. Now I realize it's a simple technique. First they rob people of their faith, make them forget the intrinsic goodness in them, introduce them to mindless violence and blood-bathing thus turning them utterly atheist. However, we are genetically inclined to have faith. In the vacuum they plant their personality. Thus starts the cult of a dictator. State propaganda is used for the dictator's deification. And we have crazy, blinded masses, happy over having their God nearby. It’s sadistic deification where common people love their own wounds and injuries.

However, the communist edifice, which gets soaring high in the sky, outgrows its sustainability like cancerous propagation of cells. Too much of laws, rules, regulations and legalized forced discipline create a facade that rises too perfectly, but soullessly, to soar too high to sustain its elevation. It then crumbles because mechanical perfection rarely sustains. You need to have a humanistic soul to help any human endeavor sustain the onslaught of time. That's why communist societies crumble like a castle of cards. They simply crash after a time like it did suddenly in Russia.

China is rabble rousing boundary issues with all neighbors to retain its CPC dictatorship. Keep them believing that there are foes outside, who have committed crimes against the Motherland, and they will forget about their own irritation at the ruling party’s manipulation of their lives. However, there is a possibility that it will snap like the former USSR. The Soviet Russia went boom to bust from 1917 to 1991, 74 years of experiment, which was inevitably bound to fail. Let’s see how far China can manage the experiment that started in 1949. It has been 70 years. Even they may not have as much time as they think. Things may just crumble up, almost magically.

To survive, a society has to have its pitfalls and imperfections. The facade doesn't go too high. It sustains. There are plus and minus that cancel out each other, like in a democratic system. Oh, the glorious imperfections of democracy! That's why it thrives.

The well managed, rigid facade in China may disintegrate. It may suddenly collapse. Well, unless they voluntarily introduce some imperfections themselves, some traits of democracy, to make it pliable, some allowance of mischief, some humor, some criticism to bring down the upper stories of the facade that has gone too high. It won't fall then.

The communist model carries the seeds of its own destruction. Right now Chinese leadership has to have more and more enemies, real and imagined, to keep the people hooked onto the idea that has failed everywhere else in the world. Let’s see where such mass distrust of the humanity outside the boundaries of the latest superpower takes us.