Intolerance demystified

So, we have been told that we as a nation have become intolerant! And who has told us this?

A handful of self-styled half-intellectuals, pseudo-yellow-journalists, artists posing as intellectuals and of course corrupt politicians. Now-now, have I stirred a hornet’s nest here? I guess I may have but I hold on to this view because I have full reason to say what I said. Let me explain.

I will take one or two persons each from the above groups of people who were either involved in germinating the thought that we as a nation had suddenly become intolerant and then the people who kept it alive in public discourse and finally those who helped propagating it.

One of the first murmurs of we as a nation becoming intolerant came from a nondescript writer named Nayantara Sehgal who returned her Sahitya Akademi award, which was conferred in 1986 by the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government. Who is Nayantara Sehgal? She is Motilal Nehru’s granddaughter, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s daughter and Rajiv Gandhi’s aunt. She returned the award that Rajiv-led government gave her in protest to rising intolerance in the country citing killings of Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar & M.M. Kalburgi along with the Dadri lynching victim. Now, for a moment, let us set aside the fact that she’s a Congress loyalist and look at the reasons cited by her – the killings of one of the persons (Dabholkar) happened during Congress regime in Maharashtra (when UPA was in power in the center), the other (Kalburgi) happened in Karnataka (ruled by Congress) and third (Pansare) happened in Maharashtra within a few months of BJP-led government was formed in Maharashtra and last one (Dadri) happened in UP where a SP government is in place. So, why is Ms. Sahgal suddenly feeling the intolerance? Where was her intolerance in 1984 when there was Congress-led carnage of Sikhs when more than 5,000 innocent Sikhs were murdered – then, he had happily taken the award within two-years in 1986. She chose to remain silent then – was this the reason Rajiv bestowed Sahitya Akademi award to her? This clearly shows her hypocrisy. After her, many other writers followed suit – and if we were to look at them too, we would certainly see that most of them had Congress patronage (which is evident if 55 years of the 68 years of independent India was ruled by Congress and many of these people got their awards and patronage from Congress governments).

Lets now look at the pseudo-yellow-journalists – one of the big ones among them is Barkha Datt – who also wrote an open letter to the PM Modi recently – I wonder what makes us as a nation tolerate the likes of Datt – we know now with clinching evidence in form of recordings of what she was doing with Nira Raadia – Datt is not a journalist but a power broker who worked for corporate big-wigs to fix power deals in the UPA 1 & 2 regimes and is currently jobless and hence is back to trying her hand at journalism! Clearly, she’ll work for the interest of Congress and therefore try and sully the image of Modi-led BJP government using her part-time journalist job and organization i.e. NDTV, which helped keep the topic of intolerance alive in public discourse and sullied India’s image. There are many such pseudo-journalists and media-houses who did exactly like what Datt and NDTV did to help the cause of “intolerance” in this country.

Now, lets look at artists such Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan – both of these are plausibly good at their job i.e. acting albeit I think otherwise, yet I won’t take anything from them on that count. However, in acting they are directed by the director who helps mold them into the said character they have to depict. But are they intellectuals or do they qualify to comment on a topic such as intolerance? I don’t think so. Again a look at their background – it is very well known fact that Aamir is anti-Modi and the same can be traced back to his interview with another pseudo-yellow-journalist Shekhar Gupta, when he was trying to implicate Modi for 2002 riots in Gujarat. So, Aamir too has vested interests to support the intolerance plank and just as in movies he is directed by a director, here too he was perhaps being directed by a commendable director because of which Aamir also offered his wife’s to act for free along with her opinion to support the intolerance plank – the objective being that with millions of fans of Aamir and Shahrukh, the plank of intolerance shall spread far and wide and the government shall be kept busy tackling the non-issue and not be able to work for the people and for the nation.

And finally let us look at political parties who raked up the intolerance debate – most prominent among them being Congress who has been championing the cause of intolerance in the country – what has been their credentials: masters in corruption and looting of this country at an unprecedented scale for nearly six decades. It’s been a rarity to see them out of power and whenever they have had to sit away from the treasury benches, they have only raised non-issues to affect the performance of new government so that by hook or crook they can return to power and continue with their loot. Therefore, for establishing that there is “intolerance” in this country, they orchestrated the whole issue from germination by employing select so-called-intellectual loyalists such as Nayantara Sahgal, followed by brokers in media such as pseudo-journalist Barkha Datt who helped in establishing “intolerance” in public discourse and finally for propagating the same they used the actors in Bollywood with large fan-following such as Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan.

And, we as people of this country bought the story they touted and fell for it lock-stock-and-barrel.

What a pity!

So, what's going on?

It’s been nearly two years since the installation of new government led by Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Do we remember the key plank on which Modi government came to power? Am sure we do not remember it anymore because it has dropped off the radar as it too has dropped dramatically. Corruption! I am sure, some of the skeptics among you would be pursing their lips and saying that, what crap, “how do I know?” Well, in such case you are saying that Modi government has been indulging in corruption using some extremely ingenious way that they have been doing it for two years and yet they have not been noticed yet. And, this when most of so-called “main-stream” media and opposition have been baying for blood of this new government from the way go, makes it even more commendable effort. Perhaps Congress should copy this new ingenious way adopted by Modi government so that if they ever come back to power, they can employ it to save themselves some future embarrassment, which they regularly albeit shamelessly faced during the previous 10-years of MMS-led UPA regime. As you would have figured out by now that there is a loads of pun intended in all this – one that there is such ingenious way and two more serious pun is that Congress will ever come back to power on the back of Pappu!

Now that it is very apparent that corruption has reduced drastically over the last two years and it’s been confirmed by independent sources too, lets explore as to whose loss it has been, this reduction in corruption. “What a ridiculous proposition!”, some of you are already thinking with a churning in your stomach.

Nevertheless, I will explore this question, as it is very pertinent. However, before I try and answer this question, some trends that became very prominent in the last two years. One unprecedented trend was gradual unification of all opposition parties against Modi-led NDA government – strangely, we did not see such a trend when Congress-led UPA was looting the country brazenly – however, we saw it in almost all assembly elections and it became sordid in Bihar when two bitter foes Nitish-Lalu joined forces with the Congress just to tackle Modi-juggernaut as their political existence was at stake. In all this, it has clearly been established there is no ideology of all these political parties except power and they would sell their mother just to remain in power. Clearly, the opposition was rattled after successive losses in Rajasthan, MP and Maharashtra and hence would do anything. Second trend was now that there is no corruption issue to corner the NDA government, hence, what issues they could they use to try and keep bombarding Modi-government to keep it busy in the same? So, they reverted to what they tried doing to Modi in Gujarat for 12-years and failed miserably. Hence, we saw issues such as Church attack in West Bengal, Dadri, Award-return, intolerance debate, JNU-strife et al. Whilst all of these events happened in states ruled by non-BJP parties, yet the punching bag was Modi-government! Did we see anything like this happen during 10-years of UPA rule when a mishap occurred in a state ruled by non-Congress government and yet the blame was brought to the door of Congress led UPA at the center? In fact, just the contrary happened, be it in Gujarat or Karnataka that were led by BJP-NDA governments – these state governments were on the receiving end always. One clear reason was that the Congress-led UPA at the center was facing huge corruption issues then and these attacks on non-Congress state governments would help them divert public opinion and also help them in weakening the state ruled by BJP as well! Talk of killing two birds with one stone!

Coming back to the question, so, who has lost out due to reduction in corruption apart from Congress? Well it is obvious, isn’t it? There are the likes of Barkha Dutt (who now has been “absolved” of sordid wheeling-dealing she did with Nira Raadia), Rajdeep Sardesai & Sagarika Ghose and co who benefited by murky dealings within UPA 1 & 2. Further, all of these people have lost the “perks” that included free rides along with the PM to wherever he visited (this was the norm during MMS regime and since Modi came to power, this “perk” has been discontinued) and more importantly the power that they wielded during UPA days have suddenly diminished drastically. Therefore, their biased diatribe against Modi was evident in their bogus criticism when he went on overseas tours as if MMS never went anywhere! Apart from these pseudo-journalists, the so-called intellectual elites (which include politicians, artists, journalists, writers, and such leeches) were also used to active government patronage, which include plush bunglows in Lutyens Delhi, awards (that were ostensibly returned to prove their loyalties to Congress and not the nation who had bestowed the same on them), elite club membership, and unbridled power to top it all. With advent of Modi-led NDA, all these people were suddenly starved of “perks” and “power” resulting in the backlash we are witnessing over the last two years. And since, corruption isn’t something they can rake up now as there isn’t anything to show, they are raking up non-issues such as what we have seen over two years aka ‘Modi’s foreign-tours’, ‘intolerance’, ‘freedom of speech’ – were these issues not there during UPA regime? Did no Dadri take place before? Wasn’t there intolerance earlier? And is ‘freedom of speech’ an issue that is applied selectively – Kamlesh Tiwari Vs Umer Khalid – we can see how each of these episodes have been treated so differently! And all these incidents happened in non-BJP-ruled states, yet blame was heaped on Modi-led NDA. Why?

The answer is not difficult to find. It is nothing to do with intolerance or freedom of speech – it has to do only with corruption, withdrawal of “perks” and lost power! The ‘you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-your-back’ machinery stands impaired and people who profited from it are feeling the pain and reacting. Hence, they are perpetually on a look out for issues to rake up and make mountains out of molehills. Hence, there is ‘intolerance’ or lack of ‘freedom-of-speech’, or rise of ‘hindutva’, et al in the country. These guys will keep going at it and newer issues will keep cropping up again and again till somehow they are able to go back to pre-Modi times by making sure that Modi-led NDA fails. A further look at what is happening with Jat agitation in Haryana or Gujjars in Rajasthan or Patels in Gujrat – all BJP-ruled states – do we have any such unrest elsewhere? Is it coincidence? Or is it by design? We need to identify and expose these designs of the so-called intellectuals who are deciding what India is and how it should be run. 

Note:

In this context, please do read this eye-opener piece by a real intellectual who has exposed the countless pseudo-intellectuals who have been used to suck-up-to-power-to-get-their-power in Delhi. http://www.mediacrooks.com/2016/02/intolerant-evictions.html#.VsrSn1JX-wZ. Interestingly, he in this article of December 2015, mentions JNU as one such power center in Delhi.