Note: Give this a casual read. You might just get bored.
First, let me chalk out a possible outline as to how in the world, the omnipresent divisive ideologies have crept into the minds of Indians. Cut to our good old preteen days when we carried little 100 pages of theories meant to be crammed into our heads. Only to be conveniently forgotten as we grow up and enjoy foreplay with the other beautiful nuances of life. The book belonged to a subject called Civics. It had all the details as to how villages work and cities thrive. How the rich become richer and how to poor learn to survive. We raised one of our hands and albeit ignorantly, pledged to lead 1.2 billion fools to paradise. For those with tired grey cells, here’s some glucose.
India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters.
I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.
I shall always strive to be worthy of it.
I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders, respect, and treat everyone with courtesy.
To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion.
In their well being and prosperity alone, lies my happiness.
– Jai Hind
Never mind, we landed up in an IIT. Consolations! The same book taught us about the 9 religions of India, about 4 castes in Hinduism, about 2 major sects each in Islam, Christianity and Jainism, about the 29 (then 26) states of India, about the 3-tier economic hierarchy of this nation, about the need for gender parity, about the age/psyche specific gaps and other similar lines of division with equally pronounced responses.
Needless to say when it comes on paper we aren’t worried about the unbound diversity. But given some food for thought and lucid mathematics we will hopefully make truce with reality.
Communal/Casteist/Sectarian Groups: 9 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 2 – 4 = 15
Regional Streamlining: 29
Separatist Policies: 2
Born out of Economic Disparity: 3
Gender Specific: 2
Age: 2
By the time we learnt how to shag, this nation saw the emergence of 10440 (15 x 29 x 2 x 3 x 2 x 2) chunks of ‘likeminded’ people, ready to bleach our insights and outlooks. The number’s increasing. You may shake your head in denial of your allegiance to these parties. I can wish you happy realization. Intolerance is now neatly cast as an essential color of the social fabric. It has made a whore out of our brains and our morals malleable.
We depict a phenomenon like brain-drain and pimps trading our country in our dance themes, at a time when people are busy with their 1400+ GRE score festivities. Plunging stock values create the loudest of furor while the agony of the destitute and unfortunate is drubbed. Somewhere, amidst this white-noise of guile, confusion and single-minded greed, the call for help from the needy is deemed unheard. And we keep walking on the aisle to catch a flight away from reality.
But there’s nothing we can do. Or can we?
P.S. It is amazing to know how easy it is to get goosebumps.
October 31, 2008 at 3:54 am |
nicely said!!
but this feeling of intolerance works in a chain reaction and the source, unfortunately need not be a very large section of society
October 31, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
Bang on target mate. Flexible morality is not so much a luxury but a necessity these days. Times when we used to wonder what happened to those who got left behind or below is long gone.
Our sheltered and clustered existence in this place has unfortunately left us with a biased viewpoint of going ons in the world outside.
October 31, 2008 at 8:12 pm |
so true. and rightly said. gone are those teenage days when we really had to worry of only whats going on there in the school books. no wonder none of us would attest a testimony to the righteousness of any of the social clusters that exists but still there lies a divide. and no doubt it begins at the grass root individual level only. something s there to be done. and definately we can.
October 31, 2008 at 11:46 pm |
Good one this. The realization will dawn, only but too late. The present times are pretty weird. I liked the numbers though.
November 2, 2008 at 8:42 pm |
Please send me a hindi version.