Recent events in Mumbai and some other cities of Maharashtra involving attacks on north indians particularly poor migrant workers from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are condemnable. Raj Thakray is desperate to gain his lost political ground after being thrown out the party run by his uncle. But in his pursuit of acceptability by masses he is practicing most vicious kind of politics of hatred not very much different from the so called hindutva parties like BJP and Shiv Sena. Politics of hate and division, of fear mongering and of narrow mindedness.
Recently I was reading a book named Time Zones by Joe Schlesinger, a renowned Canadian journalist who has been witness to some of the most important political events of the 20th century from second world war to the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Schlesinger writes -
" I have come to recognize some of the signs of the madness that leads to tragedies on a grand scale. Old grievances are resurrected and refurbished with new intensity. Ancient injustices are insufferably aggravated. Politics are elevated to religion. Religion is marred in politics. Nationalism is degraded by ideologies of exclusivity, racial superiority and supremacy. There are always scoundrels-demagogues and megalomaniacs posing as prophets and saviors – ready to light the match. And behind them, an army of self righteous fanatics, self-serving bureaucrats and opportunistic sycophants willing to feed the flames.
It is different every time. Yet it always starts the same way: with the loss of civility, reason and tolerance."
It is different every time. Yet it always starts the same way: with the loss of civility, reason and tolerance."
After reading this i am wondering on the similarity of politics of hatred, symptoms of which Schlesinger identifies so completely and politics of Thakray practiced here in India.
But more surprising and repulsive is to see several posts on the net supporting Raj, saying he is doing the right thing.
1 comment:
I have come to understand this divisive policy as rooted in diversity of Indian culture. There will always be people amonf us who wont be able to tolerate this diversity,for,they are conditioned to see everything in a comparative mode, in a hierarchy based on some unjustifiable superiority complex rooted in individualistic ego.'I AM SUPERIOR BECAUSE IT IS ME', they tend to perceive.These are people lost in an identity crisis and you will find that these people are invariably of lesser intellect and with an inflated ego who have done nothing particular in their lives but a feudalistic society allows them to think that they are important though their whole life fails to provide any evidence for that claim. So they pick up already down fellows and make them into enemies by inventing faults that were never there or at best were some innocuous doings of their forefathers. You will find that they always choose minorities of different kinds and fight their war against such enemies from distant drawing rooms until the enemy is too weak to resist. I am happy that you have the acumen to bring forward such issues but article could have been a bit longer but probably time was short.
And that book is a treasure, that Canadian reporter is kind of a philosopher and he is so correct in that particular paragraph. Thanks for writing.
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