Be it the JNU row or the Jat agitation, public discourse has not just become polarised but also shrill and vacuous. This needs to change. Those who want to contribute to nation-building, must to do so in a calm and accommodative environment. They need to chill
The discourse in India, at least among the urban societies, is getting more and more vitiated, thanks to the upholders of an outdated left-wing ideology who are making a last stand against the violent defenders of the ‘new’ Right. We have too many problems that can be discussed in television studios, but why on earth are we getting side-tracked into meaningless discussions about who is a bigger patriotIJ
In the recent past, if there are any individuals who should be questioned about their loyalty to this great nation, it should be the various policemen and other individuals in Punjab. It was quite clearly their greed for money which allowed them to facilitate drug smuggling into the State. Those drugs that are now ruining thousands of young lives across Punjab and north India. Callous security personnel also helped Pakistani terrorists infiltrate into the country. The greed of these men has cost us the lives of some brave soldiers.
There is little doubt that there are a few among us who yearn for the collapse of the Indian nation; some of these people are celebrated as well. But one has to understand that these voices are few and far between, and there is no existential threat to our nation.
The debate has now boiled down to who is a bigger patriot and name-calling. While many on the left-wing have used derisory language and not missed an opportunity to drive down ‘Modi’s India’, to call them, rather a vast majority of them, ‘anti-national’, is to stretch the point.
Parliamentary democracy may not be the best form of Government, but it is the Government that we have, and it is, as defined, a Government of the people.
And it is the Government that is answerable to the people. It is important that the people of India keep questioning the Government, and it is their right to question the ruling party. let us get one thing straight: Not supporting the Government of the day does not make you anti-national; commenting against the Government does not make you a lesser Indian than someone who supports the Government. This is certainly not sedition or even treason for that matter.
Unfortunately, some Modi-baiters have taken this ‘questioning’ to the extreme and have made ‘fault-finding’ an art. They have managed to blame 7 Race Course Road for all that happens in a country of 1.2 billion people. At the same time, the Union Government has made a series of missteps, which have been highlighted by a selfish media corps, desperate to point out, “we told you so”, to the public. This media corps, of course, ignores several of the extremely positive developments that have been taking place in the country, thanks to improved governance.
No Government is perfect, but according to some in the media, this Government is ‘Fawlty Towers’ at work. The critics also juxtapose the Government with the latter’s army of online supporters, according to whom this Government, and its leaders (bar one, for some strange reason) can do no wrong. The twain cannot meet.
In school and college, debate contests used to be about individuals arguing over a myriad of points and, while some speakers and interjections used to get loud, or rather ‘forceful’, for the most part, debates were conducted in a friendly atmosphere. It was at the school field that sometimes disagreements were often settled with a fight.
Unfortunately, as debates both on television and, increasingly, even in living rooms lose all sense of civility, with the person with the loudest voice and most hysterical views coming to the fore, it is perhaps not surprising to see the farce that played out at the Patiala House court the other day.
The death of civility, however, is an expected consequence of our current situation where we have too many sources of hyperbole. This cuts both ways, on the left and the Right. Hyperbole is often bereft of facts or rather, it is a situation where facts are liberally cherry-picked to prove a point-of-view. And even when there are facts to back up a statement, these are often presented at a 100 decibels so as to quash any dissenting opinion.
And as one is witnessing through the rise of US presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the election primaries, this loss of civility is not a uniquely Indian situation. Even in the usually more staid United Kingdom, there is a raucous referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. May be the loudness and the brashness and possibility even the vulgarity are nothing but only attempts to be heard above the growing amount of white noise out there.
This is a global phenomenon. And at a fundamental level, this is possibly because people are angry. They are angry at the powers that be — whether it is big Government in some countries, the foreigner in others, or, in India’s case, the old elite.
That said, there remain other deep-seated threats to the the potential of India. Unfortunately, those threats are not from charged-up university students. The agitation of the Jat community — the latest of India’s middle castes to rise up to demand Government reservation — proves a couple of things. First, India is still a country driven by official entitlement and, second, nothing still beats the comfort and perks of a Government job for life.
But while most of us have different ideas of what needs to be done to fix this country, if India is to achieve its potential in the coming decades, it does need a lot of repairs — both small ones and big ones. And those repairs cannot be achieved if we are always angry and fighting with each other. India needs a collective ‘chill pill’, in a matter of speaking.
On the lines of Skill India and Digital India, we should start a Chill India campaign. And the start would be to stop taking everybody and everyone so seriously. Also, instead of taking violent offense to an idea that goes against one’s views, let’s debate it or tune it out. And do take the television remote and reduce the volume. Most importantly, read sensible newspapers like this one.