Life in a violent world

Life in a violent world

For the very young,

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

is an icon of sorts.

They are very unclear about what he stood for.

Somewhere in the recess of their minds,

they understand that

he had something to do with our freedom struggle.

But for older generation,

Gandhi

is irrevocably associated

with non-violence, communal harmony, and tolerance.

Today

all these concepts are fading

so fast from the country's collective memory.

Our political leaders

who will be paying a lot of lip service

to the father of the nation in a couple of days,

have stopped thinking about him many years ago.

Otherwise how can one explain

the growing culture of violence and intolerance?

Just look at some of the headlines in the past few weeks.

How does one explain such a seasoned

and experienced politician like

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi's statement on Rama?

Whatever may be his personal belief and his party's ideology,

he surely knows it will hurt the sentiments

of the silent majority,

which is also his constituency.

In the atmosphere of intolerance prevailing in the country,

reaction is swift.

Activists allegedly belonging to

the particular set a Tamil Nadu State Transort Corporation

bus on fire near Bangalore and two innocent commuters died.

They had also stoned the house of

Karunanidhi's daughter in Bangalore.

The lunatic fringes of the Sangh Parivar also got into the act.

Swami Vedanti

apparently said

that anyone beheading Karunanidhi will be weighed

in gold by the saints of Ayodhya.

He later claimed that he had simply quoted the religious books

on the punishment prescribed for blasphemy.

Retribution was equally swift.

The DMK cadres decided to show their solidarity

to their leader by attacking the BJP offices and the leaders' houses in the state.

Didn't Gandhi famously say once

that eye for an eye would make the world go blind!

But

who remembers all this anymore.

INDIA

is slowly seeing more and more mob violence everywhere.

If the TV group

decides to launch their Direct To Home (DTH) operations,

cable operators go on the rampage.

Cables are cut and wild threats are issued,

instead of accepting market realities

and figuring out how to stay in the business.

Intolerance is rampant everywhere.

If Karunanidhi's grand nephew publishes

a survey report that is not flattering to his son,

the son's followers choose to throw petrol bombs

in the office of the publication.

We cannot single out alone for unjustifiable violent reactions.

Outlook magazine calls

Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray

a villain and the office is attacked immediately.

In West Bengal,

both Nandigram and Singur have seen

police firing and mob violence.

We cannot laugh at our leaders,

lampoon them or utter a word of criticism.

Their loving cadre will make our lives not worth living.

There is intolerance at all levels.

Suddenly we are emerging as a nation committed to moral policing.

Political parties tell us how to behave and

what is right and acceptable.

Harmless celebrations like Valentine's Day

become symbols of western influence and moral corruption.

In our country

we very rarely expose our leaders

with their pants down unlike in the West.

So their followers find it easy to preach about morals of young people.

Police have taken it as their bounden

duty to round up lovers in parks

and the beach and humiliate them.

In a state with a huge consumption of alcohol

(the excise duty on alcohol fills the state's coffers)

police regularly conduct raids on hotels which

serve wine for private parties.

Couples are scared to drive down the

East Coast Road after sunset,

as they get hauled up to the police station.

Our ruling classes seem to have forgotten,

that Gandhi fought to win our freedom,

so that India will emerge a democracy and not a fascist dictatorship.

Let me give you the definition of fascism.

"A system of government marked by centralisation

of authority under a dictator,

stringent socioeconomic controls,

suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship,

and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."

Aren't we moving towards a rule,

which closely resembles this definition?

Gandhi enters our psyche periodically,

thanks to the entertainment industry.

Richard Attenborough's Gandhi released almost

25 years ago made waves all over the world.

Last year,

the entire country fell in love with the Hindi film,

Lage Raho Munnabhai ,

with its message of Gandhigiri.

Young people went to the film in droves.

Which surely means,

Gandhi is still able to touch hearts,

and connect somewhere.

That he cannot be written off as irrelevant.