Gandhi was a remarkable man, a truly once-in-millennium human being. I say so, not because he led a successful freedom struggle against the British, but for uniting a totally disparate group of people who live in this land we call India, a land with such unparallelled diversity of cultures, customs, races, languages.Yeah well, we have all read this in history books alright. But the above fact has never hit me as hard as it has in the recent months. Have no idea exactly why, but maybe I can blame it on a heightened level of awareness (that I hitherto did not possess) in perceiving what's going on in this country.
The concept of India as a nation cannot have happened but for Gandhi, because it must have been an audacious thought to even imagine such a diverse bunch of people could decide to be citizens of the same country! It was his legacy (and a few of his followers') that India managed to stay as one nation, although one could see cracks developing on the walls all these years.
Today, in 2008, one just has to survey the political scene in this country to see how fragmented things have become. The last decade or so, has shown that the days of the single-party rule is over and smaller and smaller groups have started wielding power. The rise of regional parties with distinctly regional interests such as the BSP, the SP, the Telugu Desam, the BJD, the PMK etc., have shown that the national identity is fast being replaced by a regional one. And the regional identities are getting smaller and smaller as has been shown by groups such as TRS in Andhra Pradesh that is demanding a separate statehood for the region.
Could this be the start of the balkanization of India? A few years earlier, I would have laughed if someone had ventured to suggest the idea that India, on the cusp of an unparalleled economic boom, faced a threat to it sovereignty. But today am not so sure. Heck, it is scary to think that this might even happen in my lifetime!
When the two of major news headlines I read today happened to be about...
a) the shameless overtures made by the UPA and the NDA to criminals and
b) the communist party's senior leader proclaiming Mayawati as a possible future PM if the UPA government falls
....I have a empty feeling in my stomach.
It is too easy to blame our politicians for the mess like so many of us do simply because we just hate being accountable. It's easier to have a bogeyman, a whipping boy, to fix the blame on and go on living our lives showing just the right amount of self-righteousness and indignation whenever it is required socially. The rot is too deep and the blame lies on all of us who have chosen to each time put self over the nation and think it is somebody else's job to govern and rule.
The wrong kind of people get to the top in politics because they are allowed to by an electorate that is either ignorant or ill-informed or selfishly-motivated and narrow-minded. When a society elects its leaders for all the wrong reasons, what hope can there be for its survival.
When there is rotting carcass for dinner, expect the vultures not butterflies.
5 comments:
I'm afraid to admit...I couldn't agree more with you.It's the saddest thing that being a 20 year old you realize that,the country,my very basic essence,my home is just a figment of my imagination...
hello suresh..i do agree with the fact that Gandhi did the impossible during the freedom struggle...uniting INDIA..but we must understand that the condition demanded it and hence it was done.today it is a different scenario altogether.today what we require is smaller states so that they can be easily governed and the programmes carried out will actually reach the real targets.
isnt it a shame that since the past 60years we havent been able to tackle the issue of poverty in India??if we want inclusive growth to be meaningful..smaller states can pave way to the solution..because so far bigger states have proved that they havent included the masses.If USA is able to survive as a democracy and a super power despite having 50 states..i'm confident INDIA will do even better.JAI HIND
Am ok with smaller states..in fact I am all for it. I only don't want India to go the Yugoslavia way!
I was born in independent India - in 1952. Have a vague memory of formation of my state, Kerala as per the policy of linguistic based states (I vaguely remember the fireworks and celebrations which as a child I watched in fascination, the discussion between elders on whether Kanyakumari should rightfully belong to Kerala or Taqmil Nadu). I also vividly remember the division of Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat, Punjab into Punjab and Haryana and so on(In school the answer to the question - How many states are there in our country ? became a dynamic variable every academic year).
Slowly the way things are moving on - like the case of those little bunch of goons who can hold the majority to ransom in Mumbai, the Andhra-Telegana dead lock and so on, what you have expressed may well become a bitter reality. And I am afraid during my life time itself.
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