As I write, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, is on his way again to the orphaned state of Manipur.
Minutes ago, I heard an otherwise intelligent anchor on an electronic channel ask belligerently of the Congress spokesperson on her talk show: “Is Rahul Gandhi going to Manipur just to do politics or to find a solution?”
And I wondered to myself whether Bapu Gandhi had ever been asked why he went to Noakhali – to do politics or to find a solution.
Incidentally, the anchor seemed not to remember that Manipur has not a Congress government, and that Rahul Gandhi is not the prime minister, not yet.
But, to the larger inference:
So cynically transactional has our politics now become that it seems inconceivable that any politician would want to go to a beleaguered region of the republic, not to wade in troubled waters, but just to be one with those who suffer the consequences of hate.
The incomprehension of the aforesaid anchor thus underscores a larger and deeply tragic point.
“Development” having become wholly a matter of brick and mortar, digital gimmickry, the accumulation of wealth, lust for power at every juncture and success at all costs, with number- crunching economists in league with head honchos of the biggest corporations, ever at hand of powers-that-be, the very idea that anyone in modern-day political life would want to recall the life and times of a Bapu and the many selfless social workers who followed him seems atavistic.
Ask the cheeky anchor, and you would get the mocking view that Rahul Gandhi’s often repeated project of wanting to bring love where hate flourishes is but a childish ideal, unworthy of an evolved late-capitalist ethos wherein only a Darwinian goal-post now validates the worth or worthlessness of individuals and nations.
Thus, in the matter of the strife between the Meitei and Kuki peoples in Manipur, the question to ask is not who or what brought them to this animosity, or who is fuelling it, or how to come together in a common recognition of everybody’s suffering, but to declare one or the other guilty, pass over the horrendous excesses, and let those who are on the “wrong” side of official favour suffer the consequences of their “gumption”.
Notice that we no longer, almost never, nowadays make movies about empathy, but resoundingly about war on some enemy or the other, leading to a hate-filled, polarised triumphalism.
And there are those who deride even Mother Theresa as someone whose humanism was at bottom a transactional one merely.
As to such set-ups as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc., these are seen as merely the software tools of “Western” hegemony, given that no cruelties ever happen in Vishwaguru Bharat.
If Rahul Gandhi, therefore, is going yet again to a shattered Manipur, he cannot but have some devious object in mind.
As to human beings who go out on a limb to bring succour to the suffering, these now are thought to exist only in legends and children’s tales.
Balak buddhi
Speaking of children, one is reminded of the jibe that the honourable prime minister was pleased to make at Rahul Gandhi, that, namely, the latter had a child’s intelligence.
Recall the saint who, after aeons of tapasya, found favour with the gods.
When God asked him what was closest to his desire, the saint replied, lord, give me back a five-year old avastha for that is when the heart is the purest.
Think also of the umpteen songs that extol the pristine purity of the child, for example, “bacche mann ke sacche/saari jug ki aankh ke taare; Yeh woh nanhe phool hein jo Bhagwan ko lagte pyare.”
And did not Jesus admonish: “unless ye be like little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
And the poet Wordsworth was to say “Child is father of man/And I would wish my days to be/bound each to each by natural piety.”
If Rahul Gandhi is indeed returning the beauty of childhood to Indian politics, how lovely and how needed.
Better be a child any day than a man, especially a small man.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.