There is something remarkable that struck me after reading
your blog post, which has also now evoked many comments, critical and quite jingoistic
ones too. You, through the entire length of your blog spoke with great veneration
and gratitude for the soldiers guarding our frontiers. Your words and phrases
often moistened my eyes. Dear Lal, your heartfelt sentiments is what many of us
Indians hold close to our bosom. No commoner would asperse and belittle a
soldier. But what was alarmingly outlandish in your post was this deft innuendo,
the urbane aspersion, the allegation that many of us have no regard or
gratitude for the Lance Naiks, the Subedars
and the officers who brave weather and the tempestuous climate, the
terrain and the enemy munitions and isolated from their loved ones man the
frontiers against adversaries and foemen from across the border. I wonder what
provoked you to display such naïve and bizarre opinion.
Before I go further what I must say is that I and many who
hold an opinion similar to mine on the vitiated social fabric in the country,
about life and what we call social relationships etc do not repudiate your
right to comment and opine as you wish and as you did. We do not demand you be
jettisoned to an alien country for expressing your right to opinion. This, I
hope you will appreciate, is unlike the forces that are at play in the country now in the name of patriotism, nationalism and culture.
You indignantly ask if we, Indians had even an iota of
humane consideration and feeling at least of that the Pakistanis' expressed for the
entrapped soldiers in the avalanche in the Siachen glacier. Pray, what has the
plebian got to do with an expert manoeuvre and rescue operation that had to be
organised by the political establishment and the military? You seem to be
directly alleging that Indians collectively lost sense of gratitude and
patriotism and we were only concerned about the right to voice our opinion on
trivia ( as you opine) such as freedom of expression, disregarding the freedom we have; the
freedom safeguarded by the uniformed men manning the borders of the country.
Yes, now I can guess, I have understood what you euphemistically
addressed. It is not the avalanche in Siachen or the precious lives lost there
that is as troubling to your conscience as the persistence of enlightened
noises made against fascist tendencies that we have been seeing for a while.
Dear Lal, tell me what do you think- you, me or the man on
the street got to do with the la affaire Solar , the bar sleaze, the
corruption, political horse trading and pimping, calculated cultivation of divisiveness,
the communal and ethnic cleansing, xenophobia,the distaste for what is
different, that are now facts of life? Do you think we don’t have our lengthy
shadows etched in all that? Yes, you and I are equally culpable, for us as a
society and electorate vote rapscallions and people with tainted past to power, to rule over the country. But do understand they are just the reflection of us – you and me. We deserve the
rulers we get! I would now ask you to go back a few decades in our little lifes' span, to the Model School era. Where our minds defiled by caste and religion,
by faith, by race, by language? Certainly not! Abdul Harris was equally dear as
a Srinivasan or a Jose! So do not hold any fancy notions of washing yourself
free off the grime or harbour hope of redemption and absolution from all the sins.
You touch upon very passionately about patriotism, love for
the motherland and as some call it nationalism. You state that apathy to the
motherland may only make one an intellectual but not a patriot. Your metaphor
of the despicable act of casting away aged parents to the disaffection to the
motherland may collect basketful of applause for you. But what is pity is that
your understanding of nationalism or patriotism is naiveté, it is myopic, dangerous and
lopsided. Lal, jingoism is not patriotism and the former is a hideous
concoction, a brew that has brought about untold human tragedies throughout the
history of mankind. What I would like to remind you is that none of the
votaries whom you subtly and so nonchalantly trivalised- the intellectuals, or
the students of universities (which you were one few decades ago and I can talk
about that first hand) defiled the motherland. There may be cases of renegades,
turncoats, quislings , troublemakers and felons and they must be dealt under the
law of the land. All that we say is that we disagree with the culture the
acclaimed patriots in the government and their nationalist (sic) cahoots have
all these recent times being trying to pile on us. If you deny that fact under
the guise of patriotism, if you intend to hide beneath the apron of what you
call nationalism well that must be a very sorry state of mind that you are holding now. I hope not!
Blind acquiescence of authority and a blind belief in a
system of government or an “ism’ is dangerous than walking into a tidal wave. Germans
understood that and in a very bitter way in the 1940s. We Indians understood
that in the Emergency era. Beware, those who forget history are condemned to
repeat it!
Mr. Modi reportedly said a few days ago in an address to students at the Benares Hindu University, "Don't let the student in you die.We want BHU to be like Nalanda and Takshashila". Certainly a high ask in the current context. What Modi forgot was that Nalanda and Takshashila thrived as great places of learning for the World itself was because of the great Indian tradition of argumentation.They thrived on the freedom to think and express.
Feeling the breath of great men and in it their thoughts
through their literary creations is something of which I need not tell you
about. The quest for knowledge that should keep us alive! I suggest you make
little effort and get to feel the words speaking to you from the writings of
Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, J.Krishnamurthy, Mark Twain, Nehru , Tagore ,
Osho to mention a few. Watch in silence the resistance organised by Medha Patkar against the grandiose schemes in
the Narmada valley that was ostensibly done for the “greater common good” or
read the exemplary analytical essays of one of our contemporary Arundati Roy. You
may hate her, but you may not succeed in foisting a valid argument against. Lal,
the essays of J.Krishnamurthy on nationalism and patriotism are simply inspiring and beautifully- beckoning you to be part of a better world. In passing let me
quote George Bernard Shaw’s very simple, but emphatic expression on the subject
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the
best in the world because you were born in it....”
Hear out what
Amabeadkar had to say about a speech on the nobility of “patriotism” to an
untouchable (ostracised by virtue of birth over which he had no control), or what
would you say in recent times to a dispossessed tribal in some remote village
in central India. Do you know that in this great country of ours there are villages and hamlets where dalits are prohibited from drawing water? To them what patriotism, nationalism or love for the motherland can you sell? To a family whose breadwinner was lynched by mob pressed on by macabre thirst for blood and driven by fanatic religious agenda, can you sell patriotism? The artificially controlled, pleasant air inside your study
in which you may have penned this post of anguish is not what is out elsewhere.
But remember, that the privilege you have and the comparative comfortable
cocoon I have is alien to 80 percent and more of the Indian population, Lal. If
you are suggesting that they forfeit their voices, their right to protest and even
to dissent and to express, for being labeled patriots and nationalist then what do
you then make of them? The air and earth that you hold sacrosanct is
meaningless and empty to such souls.
If one were
to hold your expressions on patriotism and nationalism as inviolable and
sacrosanct then one of the most amazing human minds ever, Albert Einstein must
be consigned as a renegade and an anti- national by the State of Israel. In the
book “Einstein on Israel & Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle
East” by Fred Jerome (St. Martin’s Press, New York), you can see the political
views of the great scientist and his objection to the creation of a Jewish
State. This was what he said, “I should
much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living
together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State". An opinion such as that
on Kashmir or Nagaland, or even the raped tribal belt of central India can be
seditious. Voicing one’s opinion on such matters will be classified by you
gentlemen as anti- national. By the way would you recommend that brave soldiers
on the front in Siachen, in Ladakh, in the Rana of Kutch , in Arunachal Pradesh
be given a choice between maintaining
the man made political borders or shelving them to strive towards the oneness
of human race? Indeed, today it may seem an utopian gibberish but the every thought
that had brought about tectonic shift in human lives were ridiculed and thrown
out as blasphemy and ranting of lunatics. All the great thinkers whom I
mentioned have advocated this half a century and more ago. So please do not
glorify jingoism and what we see of that.
You speak
passionately about the great country India is, its great culture, its ancient traditions,
its natural beauty, its ancient treatise. You plead to make young minds aware
of these manna from heaven, introduce them to the “Letters of a father to his
daughter”! You rightly say that these will suffice to infuse sense of love for
the country.
Dear Lal,
what is the India you speak of, you sign off the post wondering what is it there
to live when India is no more? When we speak of India we are referring about a political
idea that is about a little over a century old in the time span of a less than
a score of thousand years since we know that human inhabitants colonised the sub-continent
and when civilisation of reckoning came about much later. Hence I guess a more realistic emotion
will be sufficient here.
Now, ancient
culture is awe inspiring. But tell me, single out a monolithic culture that you
can call your own and unique amidst the melee of multiple cultures, ethnicity,
languages, dialects and so on? Let me mention a small example here in the context.
When self-proclaimed custodians of “Bharthia sanskriti” culture go on
rampage protesting against invasion of alien culture, what culture are they
claiming to protect. In nearby Tamilnad State a marriage between the maternal
uncle and his niece is accepted, while just across the ghats in Kerala that is
horrendous – its incest! Can you speak of any similarity of culture in a remote
Naga hamlet or a poverty stricken sub-Saharan Africa like village in Bihar and of our Mallapuram? Even Deepavali is celebrated varied in Punjab
and the other parts of north when compared to the south. Buffalo or an Oxen is decapitated in
the north east during Durga Pooja, while in piety(sic) filled Gujarat that is
sacrilege! Can you clear my incertitude here?
MohanLal
dear friend, India as we know is not merely a political ramshackle nation
created post 1947. Even if one concedes it is so the multitude of diversity- ethnicities,
of culture, tradition, languages, dialects, faith, social customs to name a few
aspects, are unfathomable to an Indian like me, let alone a foreigner. It is
the rainbow effect of the harmony of all this- the sum total that is India to
many of us. Even the military is a spread of different colours, ethnicity and
language. It is this fabric that many of us long to live for, not the vitiated,
divisive, deprived land that is threateningly held in front of our eyes to
behold mutely.
As for the
majestic mountains and rivers that the sub- continent is blessed with, we can
only wish that we can safe keep them for posterity for we don’t own it we are
simply trustees, custodians.Aren’t we?But alas I have all apprehensions and with reason too that, that may be a far-fetched dream.But it is likely from what we have noticed in the past two years or there about, the puritanical patriots you seem to speak for do not consider that - respect and care for Nature ,a virtue!
Oh dear Lal,
I've gone too far. A commoner like me may not be able to attract readers. You
may not even notice this reply. However let me sum up reminding you these lines
from Gitanjali. I shudder to think if Rabindranath Tagore would be
branded anti- national in the present India we live in for pronouncing these
lines.
"Where the
mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where
knowledge is free
Where the
world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow
domestic walls
Where
words come out from the depth of truth
Where
tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the
clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the
mind is led forward by thee
Into
ever-widening thought and action
Into that
heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake .“
Rabindranath
Tagore