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There is a country called China. Communism is their professed political religion, although communism dissociates from religion which it says is always opiated and hence incapable of rational thinking. It vaunts itself as a people’s republic. There is a country called India, that is Bharat. Democratic pluralism is its professed political religion and there are pronounced religions which pigments its politics. It also vaunts as a republic. But Indians take pride in their version of republic as against the Chinese concept of republic; because it is multifaceted, allows contrary viewpoints and beliefs, in short, it is politically multi-party. Chinese concept of the republic is repressive whereas the Indian one was really representative. The Chinese one is narcissistic, the Indian one is altruistic. But this Indian pride was once upon a time.
That pride has taken a beating in most recent times under the incumbent national government. They have come with a pronounced and prominent political colour, the saffron. Saffron is a sacrosanct colour for all of us Indians as it is one of three chosen colours of our tricolour. But for that ‘coloured brigade’, that is the only important colour. With designs that only suits them, they harp on the patriotic sentiments of gullible commoners by vouchsafing that colour and the cause of that colour. For them only that colour and patriotism are inter-changeable. All other colours are sabotage-incarnate! Bulldozer is a vehicle for demolition of the decrepit and unwanted; they have made it the symbolic instrument of destruction.
What are the things they have destroyed? What are the things they want to destroy? They have either impaired or destroyed institutions which were perceived to be clogs in their scheme of things. Theirs was an approach to see ‘communal’ in names of places and so they changed the names. They thought that the written history has been skewed and so they are rewriting history. The kind of republic that the common Indian psyche adores is not their idea of republic, their idea of republic is the Chinese one. Their idea of democracy is what the Chinese profess and practise – a single party rule. In the rhetoric of ‘one constitution’, ‘one nation, one ration-card’, ‘one nation, one tax system’; what has not been pronounced but well-intentioned is ‘one nation, one party’! This is a party and this is the government which does not believe in the diversity of the Indian ethos. It is the least tolerant to the plurality of opinion, so much so that in addition to haunting and stalking the indigenous and independent journalese, now they have targeted the foreign media. This government has misused the institutions and authorities to push its agenda; the CBI, the ED, the IT Dept. These institutions have been used as hounding dogs to intimidate and vilify those who do not fall in line. The govt. which is so conscious of its overseas image has got its worst beating from its induced ‘verification visits’, IT department has clarified, to the offices of BBC. Who are the IT Department kidding with?
It is an act mostly directed to divert the media and common attention from the Adani calamity; calamity as it is both for the Adani and Modi empires. There is an old saying, ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’! With Adani smoke bellowing the financial and corporate world, it is time to find out the underlying fire. No amount of belligerence in the name of Indian corporate success story, in the name of great Indian nationhood can these fault-lines be wished away. It is a matter of great conjecture now who was the benefactor and who the beneficiary in this nexus.
There have been talks, some idealist and some chauvinist, putting forth the view that one should not stoop to such low to drag ‘the honourable PM’ to all these mishaps. These are the activities of independent institutions and neither PM nor his office is behind these. Good enough arguments are these till the IT ‘verification visits’ to BBC offices which is a direct fall-out of the BBC documentary on the carnage in the state then governed by Sri Modi as CM. The govt. bans the BBC documentary in India and then the Indian IT department makes raids on BBC offices. A novice even understands this; the values of tolerance and the concept of ‘Vashudhaiva Kutumbakam’ have been seriously challenged. If there was no truth in the documentary, both Mr Modi and the saffron brigade should not have been concerned at all. If there was even an iota of truth, both Mr Modi and the saffron brigade must understand that no amount of intimidation will work now, because the misdeeds have now crossed narrow, national, chauvinistic frontiers.
India, in a limited sense, is getting to become China.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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