We should not judge the events of the day based on the evenings, similarly we should take the greatest precaution in regard to everything connected to old age and its judgement on life and ideas of an old man, more especially since old age, like the evening, is fond of backtracking on promises of the daytime. Events in the life of a man, especially a politician – a leader, are filled with a different morality in the evening. It is right to hold with reverence an old man, or to rephrase it, an elderly gentleman, especially if he has led a nation for almost ten years straight because we can easily be blinded to the intellect and the achievements of the man when he was still on the younger side of seventy, but there is a time to retire.
It is not uncommon that one’s views and physical goals are altered with age, because one proceeds to base one’s views and goals of life and development as if they have only now started for the first time without proper consideration to the past. We cannot deny the fact that we lose clear-sightedness with age, and nevertheless it is fatigue and not wisdom which prompts one’s judgement from then on. In such a susceptible state the parasites flourish.
Age makes people become easy victims in all circumstances, in memory, in health, in thought, in word and deeds, and this is brought upon them by the lack of moderation and the loss of the ability to guard themselves against the threat of being used by the wicked traps set up by others. This is especially true in politics, and even more so in a Party that has fanatical religious groups as its backbone. Whereas all along the latter were kept under check now they have cast aside the aged leader and have taken over, giving a damn to him and the Party he stands for – in fact so imposing are they on the aged leader that, despite all better judgement, they forbid him from visiting the most troubled torn spots in the country, even making him avoid Parliament for fear that their role will be exposed.
In such a situation anything the old leader says alerts us listeners to be filled with doubt and caution to the honesty of what he is saying. This has become so predominant that shame has been brought to the chant of “Bharat Mata ki Jai.” There really is no honesty in the Bharat part but every emphasis on the “Jai” or translated “Success” part because that is what the slogan shouting mob believes in. It’s the victory of their agenda, when actually it should be the success or the victory of the nation and that is where everything gets turned upside down as it were.
There are millions in India who do not understand and cannot interpret the success of the country as their success much less those who can even understand the meaning of what they’re going about shouting, and therefore those that do understand these precious words are filled with doubt as to the honesty of the feelings of those uttering them. The crowds as it were are robots capable only of shouting. This is what we can conceive from what is going on in Manipur, where women – “Mothers” – are being disgraced to the chant of “Bharat Mata ki Jai.” If this is how they treat a human mother, how much worse are they treating the motherland?
But you can give it to these religious fanatics to use such art for their personal gain, they use the motherland to justify and provoke religious intolerance, to cheat the motherland and flee to some foreign country, to deposit India’s much needed foreign exchange in the Swiss Bank, etc. A glance at the State from where the bulk of such individuals hail and you will understand that these never were the sons of the soil. It is their insatiable greed they are feeding when they encourage people to shout out this noble call of “Long Live Mother India.” Sadly greed is what it means to them.
Mother India can only succeed if everyone in India is treated as a son of the soil and not as some migrating Aryan. The Khasi relate to their land as “Ka Mei Rymew,” so do all the Dravidians so do the Bihari and the Bengali who refer to it as “Yeh Bharat Desh Hai Hamara” (This Land is My Land.”) The above races are familiar with the use and the meanings of these words in their own daily lives, but the Aryan DNA of the invaders who coined this slogan uses it more as a political stunt, contemptuously deceiving us into believing they feel the same for this great country. And there is nothing we can do to stop them from abusing this love we have of our land because we are secular in nature.
We are going to hear this slogan in the coming months to a greater degree, and it will be in our greatest interest if we question those that use this slogan as to what they mean by it. I assure you, you will be shocked with the interpretations you will hear. It is one thing for the intellectuals to see the artlessness with which this slogan is used; it will be an altogether different one for them to discover that the persons using it are using it because they are being forced to shout it out.
In politics, Party members generally instinctively attempt to ensure that whatever it is they are assigned to do, they do after ridding themselves of the instincts of ‘in blind faith,’ that is the nature of a son of the soil. In Meghalaya, requests that local faces appear on the posters and pamphlets of the BJP and that the Party name be translated into Khasi and Garo for the benefit of the sons of the soil so that they can relate with the Party in a more personal sense than just as Party men who don’t know head or tail of what it means to be a member of the BJP were brushed aside. Presenting the BJP to the people has a price, or if not a price, a bait into which one must bite. To win people over to a Party the Party must be painted as a people’s Party, noble, charitable, self sacrificing, etc and that is the simplest of tasks for a Party as powerful as the BJP, why is not going about doing these simplest of tasks raises one’s curiosity.
The inner state of anybody is characterized by an alteration between love and hatred, but I must confess that in these parts that is not so – the BJP is really disliked. The greatest challenge the Party members face is the preconceived opinion the people have of the Party, vis that it is anti Christian even anti Khasi. On questioning them for this shocking apprehension their simple response is, “see what’s going on elsewhere” then try convincing us it is not. The discussion invariably ends with, “you have a point there because the Party is neither pro Khasi nor pro Christian to be more specific” and that is about as honest as anyone can get because no Party leader who has visited the State has ever said anything to prompt any other honest answer, they can’t perhaps because they are remotely controlled by a religious group. In fact, the RSS, the backbone of the BJP, has openly begun trying to divide the Khasi, and the latter, barring a few leeches, will have nothing to do with it.
For a crafty ambitious religious leader who guides the political leader, one of the most subtle tasks is the art of deceptively serving the ego instead. Such a man desires and demands that everything shall be according to his personal will and humour, yet in such a way as to give him the appearance of always being sacrificed for the sake of the people by adopting to himself titles such as, “The Chowkidar” or the translated “watchman” or the “Restorer of better days” of the people and the nation, instead of the Premier or the Prime Minister of the country. Religion has this art of making the proud appear pious and humble and an old man fits the bill best. This is how a religious man manipulates politics and there’s no way to prevent it. There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.
Fanatics are only found in the realm of the religious and they know what they don’t want just as well as they know themselves, for the simple reason that they are “born again” individuals, or as Manu puts it “twice born.” I prefer to call them fanatics, it’s a simpler word. Any twice born individual is twice as bad or twice as good. Allowing religious feelings to dominate politics will eventually replace politics with religion: it cannot be otherwise. Gradually the nature of the politician favours that which is dependent on the religious element, the whole range of his approach to work is befogged and overcast with religious shadows. This feeling does not stand still and the nation must be on its guard. Politics has surrendered its reign to religion in India.
I have intimated the malady that India suffers from; now I will try to suggest a solution. The old fanatic must go, religion must not control politics, bring in a fresh young energetic and an altruistic leader the kind that will defy the religious clerics and put them in their place. Bring in someone in the fifties, knowledgeable, with proven credentials of progress and development, a born leader – bring in Himanta Biswa Sarma as the new BJP leader. The Party is not the problem the person is.
