When Alan Paton wrote ‘Cry The Beloved Country’ he was lamenting over how the whites can devise, construct and implement race- and colour-based social and economic injustices over the blacks in apartheid-era South Africa. ‘Cry O my Beloved India’ could be very well applied to today’s politics in India, for things have gone to such a pitch of unfair, blatant and outrageous illogical state, that it baffles the mind. Yet neither the politicians, nor most of the press find anything wrong in it.
Just a few examples:
Varun Gandhi spent nearly three weeks in jail under the NSA, just because he said something which might be reprehensible. But many mollahs spew fire and venom in their Friday discourse in numerous mosques in India – and none ever gets arrested, because riots would erupt immediately.
Sadhvi Pragnya, a Hindu lady monk, has been languishing in jail for months, even though no conclusive proofs have been brought forward of her direct involvement in the Malegaon blasts case, and recently she was assaulted by a Muslim inmate at Byculla Jail and sustained injuries to her face, nose and neck. But you have the Islamist leader Abdul Nasser Madani, a prime accused in the Coimbatore bomb blasts, which cost the life of 60 people, who is standing for election in Kerala with the full backing of the CPI-M.
In Orissa, the police arrested BJP candidate from Kandhamal constituency, Ashok Sahu, because he accused the Church of using foreign money to induce innocent tribals to convert – which is a very well documented fact, please read Tehelka’s cover story.
Yet, terrorist, Kasab, who went on killing people as if he was strolling in a mall, is enjoying a royal life. The entire Arthur jail has been vacated for him. 11.000 pages of his indictment charges are going to be translated in Urdu, just because the gentleman has asked for it and the court has even gone to the absurdity of ordering DNA tests to determine his age. The entire country wants him judged quickly and hanged, but to please a minority, the Congress is dithering.
In the same way, the president of India, who is pliant to the will of the Congress, will not allow Afzal, who has committed treason against his own country, to be hanged, till the elections are over, for fear of alienating the Muslim vote. Yet the Congress keeps telling us that Indian Muslims are patriotic. Then, why should it fear of losing its votes when it hangs a traitor? Nobody thought two times about hanging Godse.
It is fashionable nowadays to go after Hindu gurus, which the press likes to label as ‘godmen’ and recently a television channel did a programme to show that gurus were interfering in politics. But it is absolutely untrue: not only traditionally Brahmins never meddled in states, contrary to the Christian Church and Islam where the mollah rules, but Hindu gurus today are so disunited that their voice is barely heard.
The LTTE blew up in a totally senseless and cruel manner Rajiv Gandhi , just because he was on the verge of becoming PM again. But today, because the of the Tamil Nadu votes, Rajiv’s widow, Sonia, is sending an emissary to Sri Lanka to pressurize the government to effect a ceasefire, just as it is about to wipe out the LTTE after twenty years of a bloody civil war. Does it make sense to you?
India is all about equality and rising above castes; yet since 1947, politicians of this country, particularly the Congress, and later V.P Singh, Mulayam Singh, or Lalu Prasad, have hopelessly divided India along castes and religious lines. But Mayawati tops them all: she just gave a push to her prime ministerial aspirations, by promising Scheduled Caste status to 16 more castes if she came to power at the Centre.
In India you are supposed to be elected with ten lakhs of white money. But everybody knows that to become an MP today, you need ten crores, as you have to boast of a hundred cars’ caravan when you go campaigning, hire private planes, helicopters, gift free saris, dhotis, televisions, cash even, more and more. So where do you get the 9 crores and 90 laks black money? From corrupt businessmen, from the mafia, from kickbacks.
The tragedy is that the Indian press does not play its role, because not many mainstream newspapers or television channels complained when Varun Gandhi was in jail, while Madani, a criminal who has the lives of 60 innocent people on his hands, was not only scot free, but was standing as an MP with the full backing of a political party, whose leader just said that he will not refuse the post of Prime Minister.
The real problem is that India has been colonized for too long, contrary to China whose people remain proud of their culture and intensely nationalistic. It has resulted in a deep-rooted inferiority complex in the Indian psyche, whereas every intellectual is always looking towards the West for approval and Indians are so obsessed with having the western type of democracy, without adapting it to the Indian conditions. The system has become so perverted that only radical surgery to remove the diseased parts will start the indispensable cleansing process.
Cry O my beloved India: look at what Thy children have done to Thee…
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