Touchstones: What of the enemy within
Seldom have I seen so much anger and political disturbance all over the world than at present. I cannot think of any part of our planet where major upheavals, riots, wars and natural disasters have not brought immense suffering. In our own corner, how can we ever consider ourselves safe if virtually every country around us is teetering on the edge of collapse? Similarly, Europe is being drawn into a deeper abyss as the Russia-Ukraine war spreads, offloading refugees and asylum-seekers on neighbouring countries unable to deal with this unending stream of unwanted guests. Central Asia, England and the waiting-to-explode US are all in a deep mess. Africa and South America, which the world has so often forgotten as a part of the human community, bring us faces of starving children, famines, trigger-happy grinning militia who shoot for pleasure.
In just a few decades, the world order has changed so radically that we will have to find explanations and urgent solutions. Many of these movements have been spearheaded by the young, who are fed up with the political leaders who hold their destiny in their hands. Of course, their anger is justified but once these revolutions are infiltrated by others, the course of the movement changes. Forget Bangladesh for the time being as the context of this remark and remember our own Naxal movement, the Assam uprising that threw up the militant ULFA, the Uttarakhand students who started the movement for a separate state, and last but not least, Kashmir. Remember also that the Arab Spring in Africa was triggered by young people, but only succeeded in replacing one form of dictatorship with another cast of fascists.
The point I’m trying to make is that the enormous energy vital to stir up the common polity is one thing, but the maturity that is needed to channel that movement towards good governance is another thing altogether. Look nearer at your own family or clan where the older generation can rule by dictating rules and regulations only up to a point. If parents do not try and understand the reasons for the children revolting against these inflexible boundaries, the result is misery all around. Sitting down with such angry children and being receptive to their voices shows wisdom that few parents display. I have so many cousins and friends who say they don’t understand how their children can be so difficult when the truth is that very often, they are the ones who are more pig-headed than their progeny.
August 15 is always a good time to remember Gandhiji. As I look around the angry world, I cannot help recalling Einstein, who said of him that generations later, the world will not believe that such a man walked the earth. As children, we all sang ‘De di hamein azadi bina khadag bina dhal, Sabarmati ke sant tune kar diya kamaal’ lustily on each Independence Day. However, non-violence is now almost a forgotten lesson even in the land Gandhi practised it, so what can one say of others. Taking grievances to the streets is a call every party gives to its followers and then looks on as they wreck public property, homes and religious places. For the time that they are part of a mob, individual identity is subsumed into that of a collective anger and a red cloud of rage in their eyes.
Yet, I often wonder how soldiers who shoot women and children, pilots who bomb cities, rapists, mass murderers or assassins and such goons sleep at night. Are they not haunted by the images of destruction that flash as soon as they shut their eyes? Whether they are ever caught and punished by law or whether they escape into anonymity, never forget that crime and punishment are bound by their own cycle of retribution. As my mother wrote once, there is no spirit so free whose feet are not bound by the chains of one’s own conscience. In Christianity, a dying man is offered the choice of a last confession before a priest, so that he can die with a clear conscience after confessing and atoning for any wrongs he may have committed.
Even as we hoist the National Flag at every home, lustily shout ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai!’, wave party flags to terrorise our neighbours and teach the young to hate the enemy out there, what about the enemy within? Are lessons of truth, ethics, civics, respect for all forms of life, reasonableness and helpfulness even taught in most schools now? High-minded slokas and mantras are a shortcut we have adopted to replace moral science. Selfishness, greed and envy are a severe handicap as they deal with the fiercely competitive life that we pitch our young into. Helping someone before grabbing your share, being kind to strangers, treating the elderly and weak with compassion — these are values children learn by seeing their family and peer groups in school. They have to be practised before they can be preached. Gandhiji instilled these values in all the people whose lives he touched, because he himself never deviated from the tough standards he expected of his followers.
What is unfolding in Kolkata — ironically in a hospital in the heart of a city that worships the Devi in every corner for nine days each year — is unacceptable. Any society that allows such crimes is sick beyond repair.
