Editorial: Hate and Paranoia are Handicaps, And Infectious

Kokrajhar, then the madness in South India, then a return of the venom of the Thackeray clan, Kokrajhar again, a reminder of the Godhra carnage, Thackeray’s still in news, the targeting of Sri Lankan pilgrims in Tamil Nadu and now the icing with quotas in promotions... Leaders and agent provocateurs are at it again across the country and while their actions might corner them a constituency of the pessimistic, it continues to make the country unpleasant. What is worse, for all the political mileage hate mongering and blame fixing might notch up, it does not achieve anything for the target vote bank. All one is left with is more paranoia, more hate, more pessimism, more violence. The real issues remain unaddressed.
To blame someone else for everything that is lost, because that is what the lazy leaders peddle, is the argument of the ignorant, the odious opportunism of flawed mindsets. Even though external situations can influence personal experiences and shape individual futures, issues of identity, status, culture and heritage, even opportunities, raised by noxious cliques that surface every time elections come around, are more nuanced and complicated; not offering themselves easily to straightforward categorisations of victims and oppressors. These are inheritances and opportunities that are squandered away more due to ignorance and non-involvement than the projected monsters of influx or poaching by outsiders. If these are indeed issues that worry the people, then they should be seeking enhanced empowerment, not imbibing hate or marking enemies. To blame someone else for the privations, whether personal or shared, is the excuse of the weak and any ‘achievement’ secured from this plank are hand-outs, not accomplishments of the proud. The knee-jerk reaction to expressed fears is the granting of quotas and reservations. These, if our country’s experience of the past more than 60 years is any indication, enfeeble communities even more and create even more creamy layers of a handful of the privileged. These are, at best, fingers in the dyke, not reinforcements behind which genuine empowerment can be nurtured, confidence cultivated.
Most insular leaders, however, are trying to build constituencies held together by hate-inspired paranoia, projecting a future that aspires for the past. Few things can be more disrespectful of the people than these aspirations that seek to convince the people that the past was somehow better, that perfection had already been achieved and people need to return to that ‘Ram Rajya’ of the past and live there, static, without change, forever. Why this is disrespectful is because it ignores that fact that people learn from the past, grow with experience and keep improving, individually, socially and as a people. It is also offensive because it suggests that successive generations have failed in contributing anything constructive to the situation already achieved by their predecessors. These leaders would have people just be, live on, but contribute nothing; no rocking the boat here. Insularity requires that after a people have regressed, apart from living in that suspended animation, they also live in constant fear protecting the past that has become their future. Those who aspire for such lives and see nothing wrong in it can tear up this paper and cleanse away any contamination that this drivel might have caused, for the rest, here is the parting though - To suggest that the past was better is a harmless romantic escape at one level, one that could even inspire a genuine understanding and appreciation of influences that shape us and maybe even deliver pride and confidence, but becomes an offensively destructive slogan in the hands of politicians. Blame infects fear and fear breeds intolerance; these are handicaps, not virtues; and as recent developments have reminded us, also infectious...