The meddlesome fools in our country

While reading the article “Protests, yet roses all the way” on the back page of the Feb 15th Bangalore edition of the Hindu, I experienced that familiar sensation of impotent rage, which afflicts a substantial majority of us, surging up yet again. We all have felt that sickening helplessness at some time or the other, being heckled by a prejudiced cop, getting roughed up by an errant shopkeeper, or simply being shoved out of a queue by someone. This is probably the single most damning affliction which impedes those with an honest intent to improve things from entering the mainstream.

Quite evidently, there aren’t any practical ideas by which an individual can take care of this menace. The onus is on our judicial and legal system. Why shouldn’t the organizations like Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, RSS et al be labeled as militant outfits and banned? These outfits, which have had reporters, policemen and the whole nation being witness to their destructive tendencies, are flourishing in our midst, and there is no conscious effort to curb their influence. These outfits are aiming to destabilize the entire social structure and if they had their say, India would soon turn into a rogue nation closed to the outside world. It is really distressing that people are actually predisposed towards the ramblings on a supposed ideology which doesn’t really exist.
Another significant aspect of this whole mess is the moral right of these outfits to stand up for Indian culture. Most of them wouldn’t know Khajuraho from the Statue of Liberty; the number of heritage sites in India, or the capital of Jharkhand. In no way does the Indian or any culture commemorate communal violence and disparage the noble vision of togetherness celebrated on Valentine’s Day. It’s high time we stopped allowing ourselves to be dictated by a set of individuals who have no capability to interpret anything but claim to have interpreted the glorious Indian culture?

mobs

Hope, desperation, humor, dejection, animosity, nostalgia, desire the biggest ingredient for dramatics that surpasses them all; patriotism. The character of John Mason played by an aging sean connery, in the somewhat watchable Rock says "patriotism is the virtue of the vicious".

In my opinion, if you are a patriot, you can't be against casteism, racism, regionalism or communalism, they work on the same construct, just the expanse is different. As far as India is concerned, I'd surely like to know where the quintessential India is. In Karnataka, I feel as much an outsider as a Spaniard would, probably more, because, I don’t have a fair-skin. Each state, each province these days is trying harder to protect its boundaries, its regionalism, its language, I don't even need to bring up cases like north east, where, it is usual to be confronted with questions like "are you from India". So, where's the India we're all getting so emotional about?. Here you have people grouping together to fight anyone once they find a common ground, India is just a collection of temporary mobs which change as per convenience. Issues like caste, reservations, religion, region, are all excuses.