Much has been spoken about the richness of Indian culture,
tradition, values and so on. The subject, in recent times has been more out in
the open, now that a rightwing party has its wings spread wide and almost
everywhere. Erosion of values, of ethos, of true Indian culture due to the
malevolent influence of alien culture and faith….! The list of angst is fairly
long. ( But it is much ado about nothing when one looks back to the fact that
90 percent of the present day Indians are descendants of migrants and the
original inhabitants of India where aborigines or “adi dravidas”).
I wonder what is it great about the culture and tradition
that we claim to uphold and bray often, beating inflated chests, with incessant
eloquence and hysterically. What is it perse?
The Prime minister proclaimed from the Red Fort that he
looks forward to leave behind an India that is clean- “Swach Bharat”, he said. He chose to sweep the streets on October 2,
Gandhi’s birthday as an ostensible act, hoping the message percolates; that,
the idea touches the chord of an India that is downright filthy. His act was
obediently aped by his ministers, and bureaucrats – clad in pristine white. The
custodians (sic) of Gandhi (sm) – the Kadhi
clad Congress men were caught off guard! Government employees of Banks and PSUs
were ordered to their offices on October 2 and ordered to swear oath and pledge
on civic duties. Perhaps a shade of Soviet Union era here!
The visuals of ministers scraping about streets with brooms
was replayed seemingly forever on television. Did that make any sense? Did it
prompt you and me to bend our backs and knees to pick up the stray crushed
cigarette pack on the street, or the empty coke plastic container left casually
on the path? Did it stop the ones who throw away nonchalantly on to the kerb garbage
piled from their homes? To desist from making streets and bus stations receptacle
of spit and human waste? No. I think it will not. For, Indians are wanting in
civic sense. Guess this must be the culture and tradition that some bray about
proudly? The hyped, publicised images on televisions were for public
consumption. Something we have been fed with every year on the day Gandhi was
born. And only an obstinate person who refuses to be cynical would swear
otherwise.
Well, one can say that the PM means business and intends
good.
What is swaccha
Bharat about? Is it just clean streets and building a few thousand toilets (which
eventually will be veritable filthy, disgustingly dirty dumps)? From what it is
made out to be, it seems so.
I guess we need to define what amounts to cleanliness.
Foremost, shouldn't we realise that cleanliness is not next
to Godliness and it is and has to be a few yards before Godliness? Isn't this a
country where people cried foul, offended, when a former minister suggested
that we need more toilets than temples? Alas most temples in north of India are
spittoons. Benares is a holy slum
with filthy streets, cadavers floating down the mighty river Ganga that
sustains the town. half-burnt corpse pushed into the river and half submerged they
seem to float down like orphaned souls. A river that is the source and
sustenance for half of the country’s population is relentlessly raped and
violated by man. What have the puritan Hindus who claim sacredness for the
river, call her “Mother Ganga” done all the while, the factories that spew sludge
and sewage into its waters? The RSS who claims to be the bastion, guardian ,
caretakers of Indian culture and whatever greatness that was identified with
her in the ancient, should rather use its cadre to cleanse Ganga , the slums, rivers
and nook of India than unleash its frenzied volunteers to demolish ancient structures
to build temples.
The wholesale give away of pristine forest lands to
commercial interests? Driving away native dwellers to oblivion? Watering down a
well-researched and empirical report on the Western Ghats to appease vested commercial
interests? Are these acts too part of “Swach Bharat”?
There was a report on the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. The
city recycles 90 percent of the garbage it produces. It is evident from this
that the technological wherewithal to sustainably dispose or recycle garbage is
available. But we differ from the Swedes in the mindset and civic sensibilities
to use it.
Hysterically braying about a rich cultural past and heritage
is naïve and useless while we nervelessly rape our land, air and the water. It
only emphsises the fact that we have done nothing to deserve a rich past and has
no right to deny posterity a meaningful life.