Enigma of Nihilism

As my American counterparts proudly sing the "The star spangled banner", I am sinfully ashamed of raising my voice to break their chorus. In the tough times, they up their crescendo and in even tougher times, they notch the decibels of even higher levels.
On the contrary, I meekly hum the Jan gan man, not entirely convinced about the greatness that my anthem showers upon my motherland. I find myself  and my belief in doldrums where there is not even an iota of breeze to bring along a comforting level of optimism along with it. I gather myself to shake up the  crumbling dinghy but to my utter disappointment I found myself caught in the strong currents generated by the mammoths ship traveling in opposite direction. The dreaded direction is marked with many a danger signs of an abysmal pit and no one should venture into it.
I saw my countrymen proudly signing their beloved version of "The start spangled banner and their love for their country 'India' was evident. They were so happy that ignored all my yelling and headed ignorantly towards the same dreaded direction. Instead, I saw a look of pity towards me on some of those cheerful faces, some even smirked with a lot f apathy on offer. I concluded there is point in yelling any further but the agony of losing them forever was too much to bear. I had a fair chance to look at the stone faced captain. He seemed to me a man of integrity, with a trimmed mustache and a dapper yet economical outfit with no frills attached to it. From the view that my dinghy offered, it was clear to me that none of the ship's passenger had an idea of where this ship was headed towards. However, the ship's captain had a clear picture of the forebodings from the front deck of ship.
The captain was confidently steering the ship towards the same dreaded direction yet he was keeping a watchful eye on the nearby lighthouse and sent some coded signals to it. After a while, I further surrender to the sea sickness and rest my tired body on the planks of my dinghy and passively stare at the dreaded fate that this mammoth ship was going to meet. After a few nautical miles, though still not out of my eyesight, this ship finally reached its destination and fell into the pit. I saw some distant bodies jumping from the ship, heard some desperate cries of help. There were some lifeboats came into action , a few helicopters flew by and picked a few of the lucky souls but most of the passengers saw the white light and willingly or unwillingly traveled through it.
Suddenly, I found my 20 month old daughter shouting baba and offering me two dollops of sweetest thing on the planet on my cheeks. Well, out of a writer's habit, I feel obligated to dramatize a majority of my dream as any story teller wouldn't mind my amateurish attempts.
However, in the current context of Indian politics, next few months may prove to be even more dramatic than my humble dream or anxiety filled than my even humbler attempt to add most of the bits here and there to my bland dream. Yes, I am talking about the upcoming assembly elections and then the general elections which are due next year. To make my readers more aware of my political ideologies, I come from a family where politics and sports are discussed alike on dining table. My father, being a voracious reader had made up a certain ideology about almost all the politicians and all the parties. He knows the leaders from the remote states and their brief roles on the national level. So, knowingly or unknowingly, I had been on and against his side on many political discussion that we had while munching the finger licking food that my mom cooked. Not to drag this father son episode any further, I can sum up that his stand on two major political parties has been pretty clear. Congress has got enough chances and now BJP should get its fair share. However, he made  it a point that when it comes to voting, do look out for best possible choice even he/she is from congress and then pray that the permutation and combination of the complex democracy will give us a stable and good government. To his disappointment, it had hardly  happened in India.
On the other hand, my ideology has been more of a person as well as system based ideology. I have always maintained that even though we are plagued with corruption, illiteracy, poverty and what not, I still haven't lost any faith in the democratic setup of my country.
To qualify my statement of faith in Indian system, let me quote a few recent examples. I hate it when Raj Thackrey shouts for the blood of North Indians. I feel ashamed not as a maharashtrian but as an Indian. However, does Raj Thackrey's statement legitimate as per Indian constitution. No, my constitution is pretty intact and very rightly provides me the right to settle and acquire property in any part of the country. If we tighten up the judiciary a bit more and infuse the required political will then no such non-sense will be tolerated.
Another example is the incident when M.F Hussain. allegedly drew some nude paintings of Indian gods and goddesses and he had to leave the country because of some hoodlums forced him to do so. Again, I am ashamed that whatever he had done as an artist should have been challenged within the purview of the law and our country couldn't protect the legal rights of MF. However, did my government asked MF to leave the country? Also, did my country's police or judiciary asked him to leave the country? No, MF left because he was threatened by so called protectors of Indian culture. Our system's deficiency was highlighted when it failed to act against these political goons. I never got a chance to hear MF''s side of the story. Definitely,  MF didn't meant to earn the ire of the hindus all of a sudden. However, we never got to know the motivation behind those paintings.
There are so many examples where either the political will's absence or system's paralysis or unwillingness to act has been highlighted but what we fail to notice that the same system had a lot to offer if used properly and this is the foundation of my belief in our country's democracy and its entire system. There is an urgent need to fix the gaps, oil the jammed machinery but to uproot it altogether will make us another Syria or another Pakistan. I dread the day, if we are made to realize the importance of a lost democracy and its advantages.
I have tried to cover a few points about my belif in system. Let me wrap this story by talking a few points about a few persons who are at the center stage and have a big role to play in the future of this county. Though, to talk about persons is termed as the job of the intellectual bankrupt writers or media persons but as I neither, I can take the liberty to talk about a few persons.
Some two years back, we saw a huge uprising which forced the youths and old alike to take their protest to roads and demand for a systemic change. Mahesh Giri coined the term LOKPAL, a few days back, Mahesh Giri joined BJP. However, that''s a separate topic altogether. I also bought a few candles and stood on the historic Junglee Maharaj Road on Pune for close to 2 hours and felt elated that I had done something good. However, that joy didn't last long as I asked myself, against whom I was protesting? Were they Britishers or any other breed of oppressor? No, they were my own countrymen. I again asked, were they parachuted to the parliament? Again, No, I and my fellow countrymen only voted them in. I asked again, so if they are not listening to me, what should I do? fight them legally or fight them electorally. Well, I cannot do either of the choices.
So, where do I saw a ray of hope. I saw that ray in Narendra Damodardas Modi. Though, he still has a lot to catch up to stand in the line that has the likes of Shastri or Atal Bihari. Modi has still done enough to outdo his relatively weaker opponents. Here, I see a man who has done credible work and that too with in the purview of same system which others term as non-functional and paralysed. He has single handedly stamped gujrat's mark on all the parts of the country. You talk about Infrastructure, electricity, education, law and order and all the major areas of governance. There is still lot of work required on the health care and education sectors in gujrat as well but in 13 years time, he has shown lots of tangible results which no other state has managed to do. However, I see him surrounded by many corrupt people. Agreed, but I also see a habit that this man manages to get his work done with these inefficient and corrupt people as well. The government machinery of gujrat is not air-dropped from somre forgein land. Same people, same mentality, same work ethics but here they are forced to work to execute the plans and to my amusement, gujrat goverment has lots of plans in the first place. So, this man Narendra Modi justifies my belief in system and couples it with my second core of my belief i.e. people. BJP does have corrupt people but only a fool will not give chance to modi so that he can work along with the likes of Manohar Parrikar, Raman Singh, Arun shorie, Jagmohan and other philosophers from Think Tank.
At the same time, I also see another credible man Arvind Kejriwal who is more obsessed with just two things. First shout that almost everybody is corrupt and second, I am not just the honest person. Rather, I am the only honest person and only my party people should be honest as it's my copyright. If you ask Kejriwal about his model of governance, he talks very nicely about Panchayati Raj and Gram Swaraj. The same things which legendary JP had talked about and later he also talked about the grass root level problems in complete decentralization and also suggested a few possible ways of doing it. However, if you prod him more then he averts the questions by saying, Janta will decide. If you ask him about any possible topic related to governance, he bluntly  says Janta will decide. Is it not insanity that to expect a country where all the houses of a colony are not united on any issue of common interest will be united on economic policy and in the entire decision making process. That's where Parliament and its houses comes in picture and that's where a certain degree of respect and sanctity should be maintained by both side 'Janta' as well as their elected representatives. This AAP movement has not looted money from people, it has looted the core belief in the democracy and the entire system. This situation is really very dangerous and any strikes or bandhs or satyagrah movement against its own system creates anarchy.
Another theory which I think holds more ground that this gimmick of creating a dummy opponent is done by congress only. They have successfully done it twice in the past. Once in Maharashtra by creating NCP. NCP abused congress at every level and well intended voters trusted NCP. In the end, NCP supported congress at every level. Similarly, in Andhra, Prajarajyam was created by Chiranjeevi and people had high hopes that their reel life hero will turn into real life saviour for them but they were again betrayed. This time, the same experiment in underway in Delhi and as expected, People are willing to fall for this gimmick again.
This enigma of constant Nihilism irks me and agitates me to make people around me to think more prudently this time around but I fail to undestand their stubborn attitude when they blatantly refuse to hear any word against their new hero Kejriwal and very happily turn a blind eye to the facts. I wish I could jump out of my dinghy and swim across the sea to board the mammoth ship of my dream. I dream of grabbing the stone faced captain with dapper yet economical attire, with his trimmed mustache, and turn the steering wheel of the ship to avert the abysmal pit. I wish, I could do it, I just wish!!

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A Tale of Two Brothers- Part2

In this second edition of the series of posts, I believe it's apt to talk about the main reasons and events that resulted into a partition. Some say, it was Muslim League's and Jinnah's idea, some say Nehru was keen on it as well whereas some sections believe Gandhi should have prevented it or at least should have asked all the Muslims to leave India at that point.
Some people give a reasonable theory that the Two-Nation theory was not what Jinnah was looking for. Rather, the thought of creation of Pakistan struck him quite late.  This does sound reasonable as Idea of Two Nation theory didn't became a national issue till 1940s and given that Jinnah had been there with Congress and then Muslim League for a considerable amount of time, he had ample opportunities to push for creation of "Muslim India" or "Pakistan" but he didn't.
This proves one thing that all this while, Jinnah had been exploring and scouting for some possible arrangements with Indian National Congress which he successfully negotiated in Lucknow Pact of 1916.
However, his idea was more of an utopia where there would be a parallel government to care of the issues and protect the interest of the Muslims. He didn't trust his Congress counterparts and doubted that even if he manage to win some grounds for his masses, his community's interest may not be congress's primary focus post independence.
Why did Jinnah, who once was projected as the bridge between Hindus and Muslims and was regarded as the symbol of their unity, started alienating his community from the majority? Jinnah noticed that the fact that most of the incumbents who will occupy the government posts after independence are going to be Hindus. He also noticed that Hindus have embraced & to an extent welcomed the British culture, if not the British rule. He also observed that Hindus have willingly learned English language and are more equipped to run the country. As per Jinnah, this Hindu ruled India would never look after its minority issues and thus he started to realize that if the dream of Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be fulfilled, he should at least work towards unifying Muslims & build a common platform to address their issues.
Let's turn the calendar a few hundred years back and try to visualize an era before the arrival of British in India. India was majorly ruled by Muslims rulers, their wealth & splendor was a topic of discussion in the west as well. However, the power of these Muslim empires lied within the hands of a select few and there were no efforts to uplift the society and educate the masses. However, when British started to dominate, Muslims abhorred not only their rule but also almost everything that they brought with them including their culture, their food and even their language. On the other hand, Hindus at least adopted their language with open arms.This very act prompted Muslims to consider English as the language of servants and they chose to live in their past glory.
The result of these events created a society where most of the government officials who were Indian nationals were Hindus and this proposition didn't seem favorable to Jinnah even if most of his demands were accepted by Congress and thus he was prompted to opt for a Two Nation Theory.

Though, the exact date of the resolution is still questionable but as per available documentation, on 23 March 1940, Lahore resolution was passed.It was the forum which Muslim League chose to issue a formal political agenda to create independent, sovereign Muslim states which later evolved into demand of Pakistan.
There are many extreme theories which are still being discussed, some argue that the entire idea of partition was at fault and resulted into biggest bloodshed of 20th century and one of the largest migration of population in centuries whereas other theories find partition was the best possible solution at that point and it did some amount of damage control.
Whatever, may be one's argument to try to prove one's point right. The truth is, this event has affected the fate of millions of people back then and will continue to affect the future as all the child issues such as "Terrorism", "Communalism", "Extremism" and hatred between two nations are outcome of one single event, that was partition.
In the next post, I will try to talk about the first steps which these babies (back in 1947) took and their own set of problem and methods to tackle those problem.

A Tale of Two Brothers -Part1

I am deliberately choosing to call them as two brothers and not two nations as there is an emotional connect between them. Brothers, who are drifting away from each other with each passing day. Both grappling with problems which are majorly common. Yet, one is silently taking small steps towards glory and the other is mostly sulking in ignominy or sometimes seething in anger or frustration over the whole world going gaga over it's own brother's achievements.

By now, you must have caught my imagination that I am trying to talk about India and Pakistan. Another reason that I have preferred to chose word brothers as I really see them as two individuals coming from the same family, with same sort of culinary traditions, rituals, education system (inherited) and same sort of humor as well. Believe me or not, what makes Indians and Pakistanis, laugh, dance and jump with joy are the same things.

Though, I don't need to list examples here but for people who are still not nodding their heads in agreement, here are a few examples. How many of us Indians have laughed their guts out on Pakistani Comedy of "Bakra- Kishto Me"? Also, you must have heard of Pakistanis fond of Indian Movies. Also, you must have read about people going to Lahore for watching cricket matches and their narration of the city as a mirror image of Amritsar. This list is endless, however is not enough to douse the ever rising flame of anger between these two brothers.

This oxymoron-ic existence of relationships confuses me and confuses most of the intellect. You must not have noticed that I have subtly booked my birth amongst the elite intellects. My sole aim remains here to present the present state of the relations that these two ever-feuding nations share, dwell a bit on the past and excavate the seeds which previous generations and events had sown which resulted into a partition.
To understand the complete picture, one would have to either wipe out all the rosy and gory picture which the media (print and electronic) has painted in front of you or build your own perspective by listening to story from both the sides.On one day, they give us a hope by running "Aman ki Aasha" and on another day they flash breaking news of beheading of Indian soldiers. What should we believe and what we shouldn't?

                    There are rational speakers on both the sides, who are shouting truth on the top of their voice but they are happily ignored by media. Obviously, there are more important news to cover such as Digvijay singh is genuinely worried about NaMo's marital life. What a soft hearted man, our Diggy-Raja is? Here also, I prefer to call Diggy-Raja and not the other degraded names which social media so vehemently uses as there should be some conduct shown even while discussing the issues or persons which irritates us.

We prefer to call Gandhi Family by names and there might be a thousand valid reasons and incidents which may justify this. But, what has been a difference between India and Pakistan is the approach taken in the first few years by the leadership of these two nations.

Unfortunately Pakistan lost Mr. Jinnah and Liyaqat Ali and was be-reft of any father figure since then and a similar event happened in India where Mahatama Gandhi was assasinated by Nathuram Ghodse. Again, I am not labelling the assasins as bad people or extremist and the assasinated as saints as that is not my motive, I am just trying to assess the impact that these events had on the future of these two nations.Any Indian who may prefer to call Gandhi as responsible for Partition would not deny that he was the leader of masses, people believed in him and followed him blindly and when such a patriarch of an entire generation is lost, people and even nations lose confidence which fortunately India didn't lose and was guided amicably by Mr. Nehru.

This is an interesting topic of every house party that people hold with close friends and relatives. They discuss in detail what Nehru could have done better and what he shouldn't have done. There is a hate sentiment while we Indians discuss about the lavish spendings that he was accustomed to. Agan, I am not interested too much in mud slinging exercise here and discuss the monthly balancesheets of Nehru Gandhi family.

What Nehru did got right was the start of Non-Aligned movement and focus on science and technology. So, India started on its long, boring and tiring yet much-needed journey of being a socialist secular nation. On the other hand, Pakistan started off on its journey of being a National-Security State i.e. their prime concern would be security and not the betterment of their society.

In next parts, I would like to talk about what India did differently in terms of land reforms, sharing of power and building a better educational system than Pakistan. Somewhere, I would also dig a little on the seeds of partition, who sowed it and for what? Why muslims couldn't embrace English education as Hindus did it back then.

At some point, it would be mandatory to talk about how India was weaved into one thread by Iron man Shri Sardar Patel and what formula was used for partition and what were the exception to this formula. These  posts would be solely aimed at improving my own understanding of history, as we were never taught all these things in out text-books, and also to spread awareness amongst people about their own past.
One thing, I would like to make very clear is, I have no intention of hurting sentiments of anybody out there.