Dear son,
I know at this early age itself you have started questioning
the existence of god. The other day when you were talking to me, while I was driving
you to your school, and you said, gods are non-existing beings and all we know
about them are just stories. I was trying to reason with you and was telling
you that gods exists as certain moral check dams of the society. Had it not
been gods people in any country would have remained barbarians. Gods were a
necessity to create a controlled society as people afraid of all those things
that were beyond their comprehension. They worshipped thunder, lighting,
storms, forests, sun, moon, stars, shadows, snakes and all that made them fearful.
To tame them they had to name them. They named them and those people tamed
these forces and communicated them with secrete languages became the mediators
between the mortal beings and the frightening ones. Such mediators were called
shamans; they were priests, occultists, magicians, dancers, singers and
painters all rolled into one. People believed that they had ethereal powers as
they could communicate with even the dead ones. As times passed, personal
stories, oral tales of wonder, saga of chieftains, ballads of warriors and all
such came together to have a heady mix and over the years they became legends
of gods. It was a necessity of time. And without our noticing, these myths and
legends take newer forms and become new gods, new myths and even new histories.
Definitely your dislike for gods is appreciable. I believe
that at this tender age itself you have seen the truth in your own way. You
insist on scientific truth and mathematical calculations. That is wonderful and
even you try to tell me that everything could be explained by and through
science even if you do not know yet how to go about it. It is a great thing to
see that how you will use your power of logic to set up different fielding
patterns as solutions to the current problems that is faced by the Indian
cricket team in the fielding and batting fronts. It is interesting to see you speaking
in first person singular as if you were the captain of the Indian cricket team
already. But the cutest thing that I found in those observations is that you
imagine that your fellow team mates would be the same Dhoni, Virat, Yuvraj and
so on, when you become the captain of the Indian team. I too had a dream when I
was a child like you; my idea was to fit an engine to my cycle and make it a
moped. Somewhere in a magazine I had read at that time that if you bought a
Raleigh Engine and fitted to your cycle it would run like a moped. I had even
written to a cousin who was in Gulf at that time to get me one of those
engines. Another idea I had was to become a horse rider. I had spent several
days day dreaming me as a jockey. But I became a writer. And I am sure your
idea of becoming the captain of Indian cricket team may change and you may
become something else. But the important thing is that you have a dream, I am
sure all your friends have such dreams, and you are working towards it. Great.
I was very touched when you told me that I should not be
voting for either Congress or BJP. You had just set your eyes on a little boy
working in a shop on the way to the school. You started screaming in the car
itself, ‘Look Dad, Child labour.” Your logic was simple; child labour is a sin
and a crime and any party that does not assure the abolition of child labour
did not deserve your papa’s vote. Further your logic went in this way: both the
Congress and BJP were promising so many things but if they cannot do the
simplest thing on the earth, that is the abolition of child labour then what
kind of change that they were going to bring in for the society. I was really
amused to hear that. I could understand the sensitivity that children of your
age have today. Though you and your friends watch a lot of television, I am
happy that you people have not lost your tenderness. But you gave me another
surprise while I said that I might vote for the AAP. But you said, Papa, if
there is a ‘none of the above’ option, you should be pressing it. I have never
heard a better advice than that except in the competitive questions of
application forms.
In fact I want to tell you something very different yet
connected to your way of thinking. Today I happen to watch the noted
documentary film maker Rakesh Sharma’s two and half hour long documentary movie
on Narendra Modi’s rise and his claims about Gujarat and India. The film titled
‘Final Solution’ focuses on the post Godhra ( February-March 2002) violence in
Gujarat instigated, strategized and executed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the lumpen elements in the Bhartiya Janata Party
and all other right wing fundamentalists in collusion with the state civil administration
and police. The film is an eye opener. The film came to me as a surprise as I
have been reading Manoj Mitta’s ‘The Fiction of Fact Finding’, a very
interesting investigative literature on Post Godhra violence, for the last few
days. This film gave full visuals to what I have been reading. The film starts
with Narendra Modi’s Gaurav Yatra in order to establish and consolidate his
regime in Gujarat immediately after the pogrom. The horrendous violence
unleashed on Muslims is unimaginable. The survivors are still in rehabilitation
camps, which Modi is desperate to close down. Muslims were killed in thousands
as retaliation against the torching of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express that
had carried the Ram Sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya after a VHP call.
Fifty six people had lost their lives in this incident. They said that there
was a Muslim conspiracy against it. So they killed thousands of Mulisms, raped
their women and looted their business establishments. All for what and in whose
name? In the name of God.
I am happy that you believe that there is no God. You are
too young to take a decision on your choice to be an agnostic or atheist. But
at present when you say this I am so proud of you. If there is a god who asks
the believers to kill the sons and daughters of other gods, then what kind of
god is that? Which is that god that asks an eye for an eye. There is a great
saying by Gandhiji, ‘an eye for an eye would leave a country of blinds.’ You
should believe in that. If people kill each other, rape and loot in the name of
god and if they could justify all their actions based on bigotry, false
nationalism, imagined mother land and all based on one or two religious texts
and exhilarating speeches by illogical orators who put on the guise of great
theologians and spiritual persons, then what kind of a world that we would be
given to live in. With what kind of face that we would look at young people
like you? You should see this documentary, if possible. This is full of pathos.
One cannot justify the Muslim conspiracy in killing the Ram Sevaks in Godhra.
Its retaliation in the form of genocide also cannot be justified at any cost.
Those leaders give inflammatory speeches invoke Pakistan, Islamic terrorism,
the backwardness of Muslims and so on. But none cares to ask what the dominant
Hindu religion has done to its own people, the tribals, the backward Hindus,
the Dalits, women and children? How could Hinduism survive as an exclusionary
religion as leaders believe? How can they claim that India would be land of
Hindus? In the documentary one of the leaders in Pavagad in Gujarat says that
they are not asking the Muslims to leave the country but in any family there
are big brothers and small brothers. The small brothers are expected to follow
the big brothers whatever they say. Muslims in India also have to live like
small brothers. It is a chauvinistic attitude. The patriarchy that thrived in
the joint family systems amongst the Hindus has given birth to such kind of
arrogance. Today, where people live in apartments and flats and in nuclear
families does anyone think that younger brothers blindly follow the older ones?
The film of Rakesh Sharma shows some graffiti written on the
walls of Muslim shanties. They are all abusive and provocative. I was reminded
of the similar graffiti during the Nazi regime in Germany. Also it is clearly
shown in the film Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin. I thought those were the
album pictures from the dark history of the previous century. But it is
happening right in front of our eyes. Nazi people used propaganda in different
ways. They used to call for mass meetings at night and it was compulsory for
the people to attend them. Leaders used to give inflammatory speeches in highly
charged hysteric fashion. They connect their illogical ideas with the larger
idea of nationalism and they tie it up with the imagined enemy and ask the people
whether they agreed with it or not. The people are very susceptible in those
hours and they shout out that they hate the Jews. And in those moments they are
ready to kill. When these meetings become a regular feature, they are
intoxicated by these speeches. During night, after a long day’s work, people’s
brains are very prone to suggestibility. They could be taken in to a hypnotic
trance with mere suggestions filled with histrionics. Hitler was exactly doing
it. He moved the large masses of hypnotised people and they were ready to kill
the Jews. In this movie, you could see how the right wing leaders were using
the same technique of moving people in the same Nazi fashion.
What touched me in the film was the last seen where we see a
four year old boy in a kindergarten class. He had already been shown in one of
the earlier segments of the film. To the query of Rakesh Sharma, the innocent
boy looks at the camera and tells us how he witnessed his parents and relative
were hacked to death right in front of his eyes. He even says that they forced
the women to strip and they did all the wrong things to them. Mere aunty ko bhi
nanga kar diya (they stripped my aunty too), says the boy. If you are a human
being you will be shattered to hear this, not because it is done to his aunty
but because he was there to witness it and later recount it. In the final scene
of the film, the same boy is interviewed again. He wants to become a soldier
when he grows up. What he would do once he becomes a soldier? He would burn
them. Who? The Hindus. Is it right burning Hindus? Yes, I want to burn them. I
am a Hindu, tells the film maker to the boy. Will you kill me too once you
become a soldier? The boy hesitates for a moment. He looks deeply into the
camera (into the eyes of Rakesh Sharma). He says, No, I will not kill you. But
I am a Hindu, insists the film maker. But you don’t look like one, says the
boy. Son, I cried watching this.
You may also see the resonances of Ram Ke Naam (In the Name
of Ram), a documentary done by Anand Patwardhan, almost a decade back from the
date of the post Godhra violence. History repeats first as tragedy and then as
farce, said Marx. Ayodhya movement led by Advani was a tragedy, a national
historical tragedy. Godhra led by Modi was a farce. But in both cases innocent
human lives were put at stake. Massacre was large scale and absolutely remorseless.
The same Advani justified Modi during the Godhra days. Like the irony of
history, exactly after a decade from the Godhra days, Advani was sidestepped by
Modi to become the official prime ministerial candidate of BJP. The game of
political dice is still on, where women, children and old people are made into
living victims. Most of the men are killed in the process. One of the right
wing leaders says, all the Muslims are not terrorists, but if there is a terrorist,
he is a Muslim. The Orwellian double speak is blatantly put to use by these
leaders to seduce the lumpen to commit atrocities against Muslims. All in the
name of God. I am happy that you do not believe in God.
With love
Papa
Great ! Your son is as lucky as you are!
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