Editor,
With great power comes great responsibility, Spiderman says. Indeed! Though fictional, yet this superhero dedicates his life to protect the helpless and the destitute. Alas! This is mere fiction. Reality speaks differently. Yes, our representatives are no super-heroes yet they are certainly elected and vested with the power and the will to do good, at least for those that have elected them. Sadly, this is not the case with our representatives. For them with great power comes a feeling of greater importance and arrogance. A feeling of being different and at an altogether different level.
If only those in power understand that because of the power vested in them, they are expected to be more responsible towards those who have placed them in positions of authority. However, reality speaks otherwise. Power is no longer the ability to utilise one’s power for the good and the welfare of all. Instead power is used to ensure one’s personal growth both in terms of wealth ranking and the right of way by bulldozing fellow drivers on public roads.
As far as Meghalaya is concerned, there is little to no progress and development at all. Have governments in the past and the present one done anything concrete and substantial for the state and its citizens? Those of us living in Shillong, are still fortunate. But what about our fellow citizens living in the villages? Can the government conveniently remain blind to their difficulties? These are people who cannot access even the basic necessities, leave alone the other comforts of life. Do they have proper roads, schools, hospitals and better health care? NO!
While our representatives are indulging in the VIP culture they are also shielded from the travails of being weary at not receiving proper health care, of being stranded in traffic or not finding a parking space or of reaching their destinations on time. Now we have the convoy escorting our VIPs even hitting and killing those driving on the public roads. Then we have the hawkers who are still not being relocated; the Chief Minister visiting the students on hunger strike at NEHU as a citizen and not as the Chief Minister of the state, and many more such examples which show that things are not working for the ordinary citizens. In all of this it is us lesser beings – the ordinary citizens that constantly face difficulties and lose out. Is there hope for a better tomorrow? Well, all that we have is hope.
Yours etc.,
Jenniefer Dkhar,
via email
Civilised VIPs
Editor,
Some years ago I was watching a football match in the U.K. and on the big screens the camera panning the crowd suddenly stopped and then zoomed on to a gentleman sitting with a young lad by his side – it was none other than the then U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and his young son watching their favourite team. The Prime Minister sat amongst the crowd in one of the public galleries with no signs of black or grey ‘cats’ anywhere to be seen and no special seats and no signs of any VIP treatment. The crowd, it appeared, also accepted him as one of the spectators and treated him so. When the match was over, the Prime Minister and his son shuffled out of the stadium together with the crowd with no signs of preferential treatment and with no disturbance to the public at all. I remembered the wonderful feeling I had on seeing such civilised behaviour and my mind recalled the way our so-called VIPs back home behaved and who, on being elected, thought that they walked on air and while on the road, make their escorts shove other lower mortals out of the way. It is time that our so-called VIPs learn some decorum and respect for the public who elected them and they should learn a lesson from the hit and run incident at the Cherry Blossom festival which defied all sense of civilised and humane behaviour.
Yours etc.,
D M Pariat,
Shillong
Vidyasagar and a remarkable coincidence
Editor,
September 2024 witnessed a remarkable coincidence. On the Patna High Court judge’s comment that a widow has “no need to put on makeup”, the Supreme Court said that the remark, “is not commensurate with the sensitivity and neutrality expected from a court of law.” Interestingly, the Supreme Court made this observation on September 25, which is a day before the birth anniversary of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who got the Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act decreed in 1856 after withstanding steep obstacles from regressive forces.
Just after Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the name of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar comes to mind as a pillar of Bengal Renaissance that showed the light to India. As a matter of fact, Ishwar Chandra complemented Ram Mohan. Risking his life, Raja Ram Mohan Roy fought against the practice of sati, and he was able to reclaim Hindu widows’ right to live. Whereas Ishwar Chandra won for the widows the right to live according to their choices.
Bengali prose got its life at the hands of Ram Mohan. Vidyasagar complemented it by adding beauty and flow to it. Raja Ram Mohan Roy believed that education was a tool for social change, and all should have access to it. Whereas Vidyasagar championed women and backward castes’ right to education.
Unfortunately, those with a vested interest always try to brainwash us into believing that the past was good and the present is bad, so we need to go backwards. So long as we get great reformers like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who do not hesitate to strike hard at the age-old prejudices that denied girl’s and Dalit’s right to education and widow remarriage, the agenda of the regressive forces will not meet with success.
I learnt the Bengali alphabet through Ishwar Chandra’s book ‘Borno Parichoy’ (Introduction to the letter) and Sanskrit through his books ‘Upakram Monika’ and ‘Vyakaran Koumudi’. He was a philosopher, academic, writer, social reformer, translator, printer, and publisher. But more than that, he was an ‘ocean of kindness’ (Dayar Sagar) as had aptly been described by the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt.
He did everything for women’s education, starting from establishing schools for girls, to door-to-door campaigning, requesting parents to send their daughters to school. He was as good as his words. Not only did he fight for the widow’s remarriage, but he also arranged for his son to marry a widow. This shows that there was not an iota of hypocrisy in him.
Sri Ramakrishna was another one who walked the walk and talked the talk. Sri Ramakrishna embraced Islam and religiously followed its path. Then again, he embraced Christianity and did the same. Actually, he practiced what he preached, “Many opinions, many paths.”
Vidyasagar means ocean of knowledge. But to know about the man behind this name, we need to understand the words of Sri Ramakrishna who said when he came to meet Vidyasagar, “Today I have come to the ocean. Until now I have come across canals, lakes, and rivers. Now I see the ocean.” When Vidyasagar humbly retorted, “Then, sir, you are welcome to take some salt water.” Sri Ramakrishna refuted him by saying, “No, my dear sir, you are surely not the salt ocean. You are not the ocean of avidya. You are the ocean of vidya, the ocean of milk!”
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s statue was destroyed by a saffron-attired group, on May 14 2019, at Vidyasagar College in Kolkata. But no one can destroy Vidyasagar, who neither bowed his head to the colonial mindset of high-ranking British officials’ nor to inhuman rituals. The Supreme Court’s recent observation on the eve of Vidyasagar’s birth anniversary shows that he is still showing the light to us.
Yours etc.,
Sujit De,
Kolkata