Editorial Sep 2016 | Print issue
“ तुम्हें दिल्लगी भूल जानी पड़ेगी ,
मोहब्बत की राहों में आके तो देखो |
Your seeming likingness of heart will be forgotten,
Come and look at the ways of love “
– Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
I love traveling. But I am a hill person. So, I will prefer the Himalayas. But since I’m in Mumbai, and I need to escape cities, I go sometimes to Goa. You know, to have a break, and change my consciousness level. May be Gokarna where there are less Indian tourist. But I have done all that, I need to detoxicate myself, may be a Green Tea and some salad with Olive oil for an year or so. Some trekking near Mumbai for a while may be. It is nature. Actually I love a lot of things, I don’t know how many times I utter word ‘love’ in a day. Ohh and I love art, and concerts. I heard Coldplay is coming. I love that guy. All yellow. Like Jaundice.
George Orwell died of tuberculosis not Jaundice in 1948. He wrote in his book ‘1984’ about The Ministry of Love, an interior ministry. It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through fear, buttressed through a massive apparatus of security and repression, as well as systematic brainwashing.
People have been negotiating with POWER, to keep their spaces running, for the Love. Love that germinates from literacy, word, law: words written in newspaper by few, laws pronounced in judgement by few: making people believe that this is how the world runs. While people who are educated romanticize of being nomad, and some making nomads educated, the Love is on. Imagine, when one person in life, reduces everything, everyone to one unit by Love. One starts spending time, thoughts and energy relative to that one Love. And stop caring, or say care less about other possible Love. That is how Love can be as violent as it is. To be ignorant. Until it is collective. Or not! But, then it is like a miracle, so is going to Mars, and thinking that Alien will solve our problems, while alienating ourselves to the immediate surrounding.
And if at all we have violence in us, why not thy name be Love. Or way of life: Religion. Buddhism is considered to be the peaceful religion, where the story goes that while digging for the house, even a worm should not be killed. Then we have Zen Buddhism, which was used by King Suzuki in Japan. He used ‘enlightenment’ to being an ‘observer’ and reduced everything to an object, justifying militarisation and killing, because if you are killing someone, you are just an observer in this big cosmos. And you don’t matter, neither does the killing of the person. The love of a religion was reduced to the most extreme violence one can imagine.
When the politicians from various party tweeted about Bhagat Singh on his birthday(28th Sep), no body mentioned about his thoughts, him talking about uniting farmers and workers, being atheist, for the Love of their own God : Power.
For Samajwad bhakt, a couple like Akhilesh Yadav and Dimple is pure. For another, Mayawati, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jayalalitha and Swami Vivekanand. And for some Bhagat Singh’s dulhan ‘azaadi’ for the country while Irom Sharmila’s Love a state conspiracy. Bhagat singh had rasgullas and oranges, just an hour before he bombed the assembly, because the bhabhi knew he loved them but protein and healthy pipes forced in Irom’s nose comes into question and what she had after she changed her way of fighting the political battle against, deaf ears of state. One did fast to improve the prisoner’s condition and another became prisoner because of doing fast. By the way, in USA there was National prison strike on 9th Sep while Indian prisons (in UP) are facing riots. But it is boring, prisoners’ rights! They deserve to be punished. What if, they are not convicted, let them be in prison. We should talk about free people outside prison, who can read manifestos and books. Books are for prisoners but laws are not and for everybody Icons their prison, without I.
Why do we have icons, because we love icons, in facebook, in smileys. We are born followers. We forget (Jagdalpur Legal aid committee) JAGLAG’s work in Chattisgarh overshadowed the work done by any other local lawyers in Jagdalpur, we forget there are many movements in Manipur, which is not represented by Irom Sharmila, we like them and we wear T-Shirts of them. It is like the story of Lokpal.
It is interesting to see how media reports these events, invoking Love. Love for self, hetro, homo, family, forum, institutions and state. They choose whichever fits into their narratives. So if there is any point, that is, which Love to invoke, and when and how? The narratives are used to suit the authorities to maintain status quo. As long as the State remains in power. In our daily life, we are often competing/ejaculating with one love over another than supplementing it with other. How to decide which one is more right at a given point of time ? Till you toe the line with the ‘State’ and obey its power, your Love is superior. A university student cannot talk about Azaadi from poverty, casteism or talk to any citizen of Pakistan. But when Prime Minister says he wants to talk to people of Pakistan, to declare war on poverty it becomes statesmanship. And then the war turned out to be surgical. No escalation please!
Mr. Arnab Goswami has done good research on invoking Love. When he has to talk about Nationalism, he will do it with an army person sitting beside him, an old one, and in any argument, the love & respect of the senior and their love for the nation is invoked. Every time the love invoked, from an individual to state, fits into his narrative and the position he takes before starting of his concluded debate in Times Now. In fact, he did the whole ‘debate’ on why Bhagat Singh should not be mentioned as terrorist in the text books because ‘we’ all know the motive behind it. But he did not do the same for Burhan Wani. Some of my friends from Assam do ask me, how can he come from Assam? Where there are demands for so many states (within India) still going on? When he will do that debate? Does his nation include Assam or not?
You Love State but State will love you more all of the time. You love state, start with implementing juvenile justice board and child welfare committee in the state of pelting Jammu & Kashmir (the only state in India where it is not implemented properly in spite of court’s order on PIL filed by Human Rights Law Network), if you don’t people want to be in their own stoned state. Keep your love to your family, partners, relatives and Google. Or go to your beautiful Landscape. Be Maun. Don’t poke. Don’t keep knocking on heaven’s door, when you don’t want to know how pellets are fighting rolling stones. And surely you don’t want to go to United Nation for your Love. Do you ?
If one has to hear Coherence and Political correctness, one can listen to United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) speeches from their website. It is really a General Assembly where, the speakers talk in general terms without mentioning the name. The referent. They have misinterpreted Dylan’s song Blowing in the wind. The only countries which mentioned it were tangled up in their own blues (in globalised word, world).
Sushma Swaraj, Indian external affair minister on reply to human rights violation said ‘Jinke Ghar pathar ko wo dusre pe pathar nahi Phekte’, completely failing to accept human rights violation in Indian state. It was like when one political party refuses to answer citing oppositions mistakes. It meant: if Pakistan can kill its people we can too. Lets see who can do more. Pakistan appropriated, used Burhan Wani, who never referred to Pakistan but only Azaadi of Kashmir, Israel on the other hand, like an arrogant terror State talked about peace, with surrogate support from USA in UNGA.
Love is pouring! Like raining men & missiles. Hallelujah! I am getting Lovesick.
English
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