Is it more than a coincidence that both days of Christmas and Good Friday have been declared National Governance and National Digital days respectively? What does this mean anyway? Good governance and digitisation are part of a governance plan, to be worked out strategically. Why choose them on special days and do what, on these days? This is sheer mockery of both governance and digitisation which have implications in the long run, so there is clean administration and paperless work. Having two particular days to ‘ celebrate ‘ them is nothing short of a rigmarole. Secondly what is worrying is that they have been chosen on two days which are holy days for Christians. Why couldn’t other days be chosen? This is nothing less than needling and irking communities without any provocation.
My worst fears seem to be coming true. Whenever benefit of the doubt is given to the present government, they reinvigorate certain hidden agenda. They seem to be hell bent in creating a monolithic structure in the country without batting an eyelid. I had earlier on written on alienation. People are also protesting that voices of dissent are being muted or ruthlessly suppressed. Aren’t these also suppression or even repression? Won’t people of such communities, feel hurt, anguished and humiliated? But we don’t seem to have a sentient government; only one which is ruled by whim and caprice. Portends of these may be bad and damaging. This should be understood.
Christian bashing has been going on for a long time. Schools and churches have been attacked, even in the very recent past. They have been assailed for ‘ conversion ‘. Then why do you send your children to their schools, where tireless missionaries strive for the cause of education?
The country suffers from acute schizophrenia. On the one hand we talk about pluralism, on the other in action we are monolithic: one language, one religion. Secularism is being redefined. It cannot. It has only one definition, that of tolerance. By imposing these two ‘National Days’ the powers that be have not only infringed upon declared holidays, but have taken away the value of tolerance and secularism. This is blatant violation of human rights.
This kind of slow poisoning can only lead to reactionary voices. Are we heading towards revisionists declaring a new Constitution, new laws and a Hindu nation?History is being shredded, the forces of history being declared as disruptive. What is happening now is disruptive, insensate chaos, where minorities are made to feel that they do not belong. Other voices have suddenly become strong armed. There is moral policing and debunking of all Western ideals and philosophies. But mind you in foreign relations the US is looked up at, together with allied European powers. Contradictions like this exist galore, which is actually retarding any holistic consciousness. The overall damage is being done slowly but surely. Again leading thinkers who think otherwise are smeared with insults. Their history, their economics, their sociology is all wrong. They are bitten by leftist bug etc. There is a phobia for anything ‘ leftist ‘. What is leftist in scholarship needs to be determined. You have bad, middling or good scholarship.
These strands of action taking place since 2014 have to be anatomised. They give a larger picture of intolerance and attempts at rule of the jungle and brute force. They are anathema to our understanding of secularism and good governance. Power cannot exude from the barrel of guns, or a brutish force, power can and should be egalitarian and used for the common good as Plato thought.
Change is transformation. Change is not militancy. Change the name of the country, change the name of roads. These are trifles, when the country is in a position to be on threshold of social, economic and technological change.
It is sad but very true that the past incumbents of governance were self destructive by their corruption, self willed and hell bent on perpetuating dynastic rule. They misused and abused power. The present came because of those hellish things, rampant corruption and abysmal lack of mature leadership.When people voted for change, perhaps in their imagination they never dreamt of a renewed hell, moving from platitudes, to contradictions in practice, hurting sentiments and violating the laws of equality. The templand the mosque survived worst calamities in the past. Now the conflict has both been intruded upon and extruded. The latest extrusion is the Christian factor, hidden agenda of attack, by revivalists. But what is revival? Is it revisionist?
The people of India are paying badly for a chequered past, inexpedient voting forced out of misrule and misplaced faith in a change for the better. As again the ‘ better’ seems elusive. Perhaps we have no choice but to be fatalistic. After all that is, if I am not mistaken an aspect of Indian ‘ culture’.