India: A nation of idiots (Part 2)

Talking of institutionalized corruption, what happened to the Anna Hazare movement? As much as a disagree with the argument that one institution can magically eradicate corruption, the idea of people demonstrating against corruption was much welcome. To quote Winston Smith, if there is hope, it lies in the proles. As much as the Outer Party (middle India) fancies itself to be the crusader of everything moral and right, unless the poor fight the machine that is the status quo, nothing will change. After all, a politician is a shrewd specimen. If he/she feels that reform and change is what the people want, that he cannot play the people and trust the poor to put him back to power on the back of the usual packet of biryani and the packet of desi daaru, why should he/she prescribe to the idea of change when he has much to benefit from the status quo? And why will the poor protest, when his life is dependent on drudgery which does not include the luxury of worrying about the poor?

But why will any of us protest when the machine can simply bring up the glitz and glamour of the Hindi film industry? We are so enamoured by smut and fluff (while ignorantly claiming our culture to be the greatest in the history of mankind, since it apparently looks down on the same smut and fluff that the “culture-less” West propagates) that it distracts us from thoughts of the future. The best example of this is Sanjay Dutt. Logically, if it were a poor Muslim youth who made the same choices, he would rot in jail with all of us baying for his blood, and we will take great joy in the inevitable hanging to death. We’ll take rallies, celebrate the event as if it was the greatest in the history of mankind, and distribute sweets. In fact, the facts of the case show that the people accused of the same crime, who weren’t Sanjay Dutt, have been charged under TADA, while the Gandhian Munna Bhai is charged under the Arms Act. The irony of somebody who lauded Gandhian thought in a movie being charged under the Arms Act might be right up there with Arundathi Roy’s laughable “Maoists are Gandhians with Guns” logic. But since it is Munna Bhai, he’s a sweet guy. What did he do? Allowed his house to be barrack for a terrorist who cut Mumbai into a thousand pieces, even if said master could not fulfill his master’s dream of bleeding India into a thousand pieces. He’s suffered for 20 years! His suffering: a number of crores a year, special treatment, the adulation of the brainwashed and other luxuries which most of us can only dream of. Such horrid levels of suffering must be the most any individual has suffered in the history of the Indian Republic. Pity and mercy in this country exist only for the powerful. Talk of taking death sentence off the books; you are accused of being a wishy-washy liberal who bleeds for the criminal but not for the victim. The hypocrisy is astounding.

There exist a few holy cows in this country and the biggest of them is the Armed Forces. We are all grateful for the men and women who put their lives on the line so that we can sleep in peace. However, even the gravest crime they commit is almost excused. We have a brave woman who has been fasting for 10 years for the withdrawal of AFSPA, which clearly has no place in any decent society. Apparently, raping women, torture, random arrests are all prerequisites for fighting terrorism. The idiocy of this argument is never contested by the presumably educated. Another holy cow is religion. Despite our claims of being liberal, we are the farthest thing from a liberal society. I reject religion even though I come from a religious family. The idea of a God, as comforting as it may be, is nauseous when we demolish another religious structure in His name; kill, maim, loot and commit the worst crimes. An entity in whose name hatred is propagated, to me, is not an entity worth going gaga over. If a believer says that this God is a deeply merciful entity and then goes on killing in the name of the same merciful entity; it this believer cannot respect his/her beliefs, why should I? If we see the history of religion, we see that religion is more an army of killing, hatred and injustice; not the entity it presents itself to be. Even more nauseous is the hatred propagated by these purveyors of God. The homosexual is a deviant and the female is a second rate commodity. Equality is a concept alien to religion, and by extension, alien to a nation which is obsessed with religion. How many of us refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Caste System? Those of us who belong to the privileged castes will argue that we are different, that caste does not matter to us anymore. We will then make excuses for the caste system; that “blood matters”. How can any society which even in the slightest way excuses such barbaric thought claim to be a liberal society? We are constantly brainwashed into a state of considerable apathy.  Whether Sachin Tendulkar will retire or not is a matter of national debate. That one in six families in Urban India live in slums, with mobiles but no sanitation, public health facilities, safe drinking water housing or decent education is worthy of a footnote in the bowels of the newspaper. The philosophical conundrum of modern day capitalism: where the private sector is the solution for all problems is roundly ignored. We fail to note even the most basic criticism of our economic model; that the private sector will only solve problems where the possibility of a profit occurs, not in the most basic duties of the state (health, education and housing). To us, history is a playlist of YouTube videos; myth and propaganda is dressed up as history. One look at the bestseller list in books shows our fascination with mythology: the trilogy of Lord Shiva by Amish sells more than books which force us to think and to question the world around us. There is nothing wrong with reading books on religion, in fact, one of my most treasured gifts is a book titled “Am I a Hindu”, gifted to me by my father. However, mythology is one man’s fiction. It matters just as much as those Mills and Boon romance stories.

It is very easy for me to fall victim to the lazy assertion that there is no political party which is truly liberal, that prescribes to the ideals enshrined in the constitution (laughable how the right denies the existence of the idea of India. One can only pity the deluded for suffering so much delusion so as to not see the obvious). I refuse to do so. Politicians are representative of society. Unless society changes and moulds itself in the way our founding fathers wanted, there will not be liberal political parties. In conclusion, we are a nation of idiots. To borrow the famous line from Justice Markandey Katju, 90% of Indians are idiots, and I include myself in this. For far too long, I have been victim to myth and propaganda. I choose to move towards the 10%, and unless the rest of us do the same, we will remain a nation by, of and for idiots.