Friday, August 10, 2007

Lajja …

When India became independent, she decided to be a secular, sovereign, republic. And when the world got polarized during the cold war, she decided to be part of the group of non-aligned nations. She was known to be immensely tolerant in temperament.

But attack M. F. Husain & other painter by Hindu extremists, court case on every song lyrics/film scene that reflects on any faith or rituals, controversy on history books, hue and cry over even voluntary conversion of religion and recent attack on Taslima Nasrin shows how a handful of fundamentalists with the motive of getting political mileage and spotlight, can cast a shadow on creative arts and make a non-sense of unimportant events, even when there nation is suffering through population explosion, lack of education, national calamities, ignorance and low standards of living for majority of population.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you notice that there is no reaction from the politicians at what the MIM did to Taslima...

our perception of India as a tolerant nation is false --

1) the truth is that we are tolerant of wrongs due to vote-bank politics

2) caste based loyalties are stronger than religious affinities in Hinduism leading to lack of will to become defiant to take up arms for Hinduism and this gives a perception that a majority of India is tolerant while we really will become intolerant when the ideals we hold dear are questioned

3) India is a democracy, but not the kind of democracy what the west has...it is kind of juvenile and it is becomimg more immature...the land that produced a Gandhi has to depend on a foreigner to choose a President...

Cheers
Varahasimhan.

Unknown said...

Nice Post Priti.

Actually what you said in the ending lines of the post is basically the reason for all this. Our nation is suffering from various problems: Population Explosion, Illeteracy (especially female illeteracy), Unemployment, Insecurity et all. The Extremist (for want of a better word) can easily gain votes from (Illeterate, Narrow Minded, Unemployed) people when they do such stunts than if they tried to get votes on the basis of improving conditions for the masses, because that will take time, will not be visible in the short term. It requires the people, us, to change for such actions to stop.