Since 2014 a wistful time travel has gradually been woven into our political fibre by our leaders. Nearly everyone in the ruling party, and several in the opposition, believe that a Hindu-past – dimly seen, largely unrecorded and based on hearsay – that existed prior to the arrival of Islam, is the real essence of Bharat. The nostalgia is of course, not too cute for most sensible women who could not have received higher education, worked at jobs like men, owned property, married or remained single as per their own choice and voted.
It is true that India’s history, like any other ancient civilisation, has been marked by wars, mass bloodshed, hierarchical grading and venality. But no matter how golden the wonder that was India, most sensible leaders choose to be imperfect but modern in their thinking and planning.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
It is also true that things have changed even in our lifetime, but history is not erased by change. The votaries of a return to an earlier, beautifully innocent Hindu India are going hoarse talking about the failure of universal franchise, of multiculturalism, erasure of caste based quotas. They mean to suggest that a whole ideology, on which modern democracies were erected, has failed.
The recent US elections have strengthened those who favour one nation, one set of laws, no personal laws and no immigration of people from multiple cultural backgrounds. They are flooding the internet with what they think are the reasons that liberalism is dead and people all over the world are voting for the right wing. In the US, Thanksgiving has come early for the victorious.
After thanking the electorate profusely for their strong support, Donald Trump, the new president-elect, and his running mate J.D. Vance, the VP elect, thanked their ‘beautiful wives’ respectively. From Europe, French president Emmanuel Macron posted on the X that Trump has been elected by Americans to defend their interests. The question they now need to ask is if Europeans themselves are ready to defend their own interests?
When it comes to questions of an existential kind, there is a temptation to engage with the debate, but sensible folks, who do not wish to lose hours of their precious time, force their curiosity back and take the long route skirting global issues and take a more non-philosophical exit to other trending topics like #Chhathpooja2024 or #Friday Fitness or #SaintDrMSG.
So you come home and switch on the prime time news like rats emerging from some unseen holes the minute the markets close for the day. These rats will nibble at everything, left overs from the high table of the System, with someone waving a finger at Naxals and illegal immigrants warning them of being erased.
The opposition leaders sit on ‘peaceful’ Dharnas or address a rural audience while ordinary men and women not too far from the studios are being knifed or gored by stray bulls, celebrities are being threatened by gangsters in jail and contract killers are killing inconvenient business or marital partners.
You spend enough time watching the prime time news and you experience how toxic narratives will nibble away at reality until even the cartilage from the bones is gone. Murder ceases to be a murder and becomes a ‘hate crime’ with caste and community identities as the police begin to ‘look into them’. This is what a killer would like you to believe. That they killed because of an ideologically inspired rage against ‘them’, that it was an act of revenge for centuries of humiliation.
When did we begin to take politicians and criminals at their word as they pick up clichés like white Americans, Hindus or Sikhs being in danger of extinction? Or immigrants streaming into countries like termites to snatch land and jobs and money and last but not the least betis (daughters)?
Earlier, paranoid relatives or friends with similar profound misapprehension of reality were dismissed simply as delusional. But judging by the ratings of popular news channels, news must turn itself into a vehicle for constantly seeding the world with madness and fear of extinction.
Last week, as I watched flag-waving mobs spouting hatred against all outsiders and leaders pointing fingers at immigrants, at the probing media believed to be siding with political opponents and planning seditious acts halfway across the world, it felt as though a frightening world had arrived at our doorstep. In a nation where a large majority is already convinced that it is being targeted for final extinction, the further influx of a world filled with horrifying scenes of ethnic cleansing, wars led by power-hungry leaders, corporate skulduggery, and bureaucratic deep states, bodes ill. It is a global reality where no one seems to care about liberty, equality and fraternity anymore. Humans have become statistics to be worked around, subjected to calculated losses with no recourse.
At such a time, the words of late Bibek Debroy, one-time ideas man for the Modi government, acquire an ominous ring. Shortly before his death, Debroy, in his last article, wrote: “..Had a role in the rat race, was temporarily read and passed into oblivion, buried into journal archives…There is a world out there that exists. What if I am not there? What indeed?”
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.