It is the culture of hate which is most bothering in our India, of today. We are no longer Amartya Sen’s Argumentative Indian, we are malcontents, horrified by the presence of each other. We spout the ideology of hate, and see in technology a virus, to stoke virulence. Even the most educated talk of demolition, not of myths but of people and races.
For over three decades we have been propagating this arcane myth, today it has come out in the open.We write whatever we want online, use words that are unimaginable, which speaks not of crudity, not vulgarity but obscenity stamped with the viciousness of a profligate hatred. That is our culture today, demonic, virulent spouting the message of hate, hate, inexorable…
I was looking at the website of a TV News channel, and the way some spoke of a community, was not only abominable, I wonder what has education done to us, both young and old. It is a spooky feeling that I experience. Young people from a certain part of our country who go to other parts for education, and greener pastures flee like cattle, like maimed animals they are put in train bogeys, to be hustled back home.
We are told it is rumours which are its primal cause, who are spreading these rumours, why are such innocents held responsible for actions which are not their doing? And, in the same part of the country, since clashes broke out with a religious minority, this entire community is branded as criminals, as if they do not belong to the country. The issue of illegal immigration, is cleverly obfuscated by rightist groups. Something is rotten in this State of ours.
Sen’s Argumentative Indian, the Indian who preaches heresy, for a vision of integration is truly apocryphal. Yet Sen talked about three such ‘Arguments’, one in the third century India, the other in the sixteenth, and the third prior to Independence. The Argumentative Indian, in Sen’s terms were voices of assent, voices that saw a prescient, apocalyptic, integrated India amidst voices of chaos and pluralism. Asoka, Akbar and Tagore. The third in fact held a world in a grain of sand, beatification in the midst of wars, British Imperialism, and cataclysm.
Then, the voice of the country is not argumentative, it is scurrilous, whether in political life, or public life. Disregard for women, children, are the orders of the day. Governance is at its nadir, but there is no collectivism in upholding the dignity of the country. There is only denigration, and blame game, opposition, ruling party, vice versa in a viciously trapped habit of impending disaster. And this has been going on for over three decades. The pertinacity of politicians in hating each other rebounds preposterously on the survival of the country.
What is happening in the Maoist belt, in North East India and in Jammu and Kashmir? Atavistic insensitivity to these problems, simply keeping things in abeyance is the solution. Then, talk about development, but even this is hollow platitude. After all Maoists are talking of livelihoods, and the North East and Kashmiris, the dignity to live, forgetting trouble torn and bloody history. And now, thousands of North Easterners running back home under the scare of threat to their lives. Can anything be more insane and grotesque than this?
Once again we are sowing seeds of alienation. No one is at the ground level, where is the Prime Minister, the President and the Home Minister? What is the President contemplating doing in the midst of this anarchy? Will he answer? Hurt is not enough. Nor grief. Nor anger. Only, enough is enough…
