Poetics !

I have never heard of any of these people returning their awards (while keeping the reward!). I had to write this because a friend of mine, who probably knew that I liked Gulzar’s work, asked me to respond when Gulzar made some statement about “rising intolerance”.

Gulzar and others might be responding based on the newspaper reports and media trials. There is a very conscious effort on part of the media to build negative perceptions and opinions after every minor incident in the country. Falling into that trap and then changing ones world view accordingly is a sad reflection of ones state of mind. Has someone responded based on actual data? How many incidents of intolerance have occured in this country in the last year? How many of them would have been ignored as 'stray incidents' if Congress were in power and why they are being attributed to 'intolerance' otherwise? In how many cases have the police reports and courts have actually corroborated the media judgments? Has Shiva Sena been normal at any point during its existence? Why accord so much importance to them now?

We all know that political parties in India are rotten - some more than the others. How come people are so against a guy who was born poor, worked hard and came up the ranks to become the prime minister of this country? And why are these people so in love with a misfit from a dynasty, which, by the way, tantamounts to tacit approval of some kind of feudal mindset - when all these left wing liberals are supposed to be against it to begin with? If these people think that by spreading the rumors of intolerance and lack of freedom of expression (all on live TV, the irony!) they can somehow bring down the current government and put the power back in the hands of a nincompoop who has no vision, no plan, no sense of context and no skill worth mentioning to lead a country of the size of India, then I am sorry to say they are just part of some diabolical plan, even if unwittingly, to break this country further.

How can a political party and its leaders who have partitioned this country on basis of religion call someone else communal? How many times have they polarized this country based on religion when they saw power slipping away or to manage internal politics? Do you know, as long as Congress was enjoying unbroken rule in AP (until mid eighties), people used to think that annual communal riots in Hyderabad were normal? And the first year they were out of power, the communal riots were gone too? And in the first year they were back in power (after 5 years) so were the communal riots? One has to be totally dumb not to see the pattern here. I am sure this is true for almost all parts of the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. If not communal then caste, but divide somehow. Minority for the Congress and left has always been about votes. They do not see normal human beings in minorities, but just some means to power. They play the card everytime their existence is threatened. Patronizing minorities, keeping them on the fringe by showing them the bugaboo of the majority and then jumping in when not in power to act as a messiah of the minorities is a time tested ploy of Congress and left. Partition, Polarize and then Patronize - thats the name of the game.

Media houses have their handlers in these power hungry cabals; together they consider themselves so elite that they are just not able to accept an outsider walk in the corridors of power backed totally by people, with proper mandate and great administrative credentials. Their elitist status is threatened, you see. So they talk of Gujarat riots and what not. Is there one Chief Minister in this country who has not overseen some form of riots during his/her tenure? It is close to impossible to find one. But the only guy who has to answer is the one who is most capable; despite court after court giving judgments that vindicate him. These so called intellectuals and the elitist power-mongers do not trust the very institutions that they have helped create because they have slipped out of their clutches to become independent. Has no one learnt a thing from the castigation of Sanjiv Bhat by the court? Does it not teach us how things are not what they seem to be and, especially not what the media makes them to be?

Lets not try and idolize people in the wrong context. Gulzar is my favorite poet but that does not make him my favorite political thinker. India will continue to be the country it always was - contradictions and conflicts will remain. May be more visible now than before due to social media and communication infrastructure. People are inherently selfish and aggressive when it comes to protecting their own self, families or ideas and they will remain so even in the future. Putting a color on it so it could help some political agenda, that is where ones learning and culture should step in and stop this nonsense. Groups of any kind - religion, caste, region - give a sense of security for people who are part of them. One way to reduce the level of identification with groups is by creating an environment of ample and democratic opportunities. When someone is at it, let us not try to bring him down.

PS: I’d like to apologize to the bird whose wings have been identified with political leanings of people. I am sure it has nothing to do with these wretched human ideologues - right or left!