The Lego & the Nation

It all starts in a pretty way – your Son demanding to have the Lego set & an indulging parent that you are, you complying with it. Pretty, simple! What’s the risk? It’s expensive, but when the credit card is there, the interest & the premium will pain you later. It is creative nonetheless & in the ways of amateurs, visionary too.

The promise of your Son, doing magic with the Lego is intoxicating, your dreams, far surpassing the child’s imagination. The child has already showed you the Lego Transform-ers and you believe in him. The Lego, your Son, the Transform-ers – Time meets Einstein meet Universe.

All so grand, all so good, all so euphoric, all so cute. Just that your child is called Modi…The Lego is unboxed in no time amidst the claps of the proud you & the child sets to work. You expect nothing less than Ram Setu really? The red pieces for economy, the greens for polity, the yellows, your favorite for sense & the blues for the society. The creator & the pieces get to work diligently. Night & day, day & night, the boy is at it and you can never get over the joy of his sheer dedication, his single-point calling in life. Destruction being the Papa of creation belief at heart, the child makes & breaks the brochure structures like Planning Commission in an arrogance of the one truly gifted. All too good, all so unique! Your boundless bundle of irrational exuberance! The red figurine toppled there, the orange figurine installed here, the GST blocks moving like Rubik’s cube that you have zero know-how of, the belief that the boys knows it all. The demonetization structure looks twisted, and your stretched out rationality is curbed because the Ram statue is grandiose. It’s your child after all, keep clapping on. & he has a partner in crime/play, the BFF all kids must have, the affable bully next door. The two of them together, the bulldozer & the architect, move the pieces with the zeal of a bull in a china shop and you, face painted in the tri-colour of nationalism, patriotism & religious fervor look-on, cheer-on.

What New Year Resolution do we want?

Midnight of 31st, the compulsory wishes flow, it may be symbolic, but as along as there is a warmth in winter who will complain? Of the messages I got today, one series in particular interested me - HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015 written with 'Hindu' inscribed in the letters.

Are we heralding a 'Hindu New Year', the question I ask myself and how will it define what future we are shaping for our nation? While a section of our society plans a movement from 'Hindi, Muslim, Skih, Isaai, aapas mein sab bhai bhai' to 'Gharwapsi' and from celebrating 'Gandhi Jayanti' to 'Godse Jayanti', what is expected of the others? Who are these others who are re-writing Mythology as History? What are their numbers? To what level of intolerance will they go? & more pertinently, how many of us will adhere to these views or dangerously still be blind to this transition in our society?

2014 was the year we saw a massive mandate in the name of 'Achhe Din' but this was also the year where fundamentalist Hindutva came out of with a full-fledged Bhagwa drive to saffronise not only our policies, but also our history and thought. The government of the day has been a mute spectator to this undercurrent that is assuming the shape of a wave which will define this nation for the years to come. Appeasement was bad, but Hatred would be destructive. And in the process of this intolerant Hinduisation, we may just be breaking the basic fabrics on which this religion has stood to the glory which the nationalists tend to infuse us with.

Will the tolerant Hindu be able to withstand this militant thought that threatens to destroy it or will mark the advent of the militant Hindu? Exaggeration in celluloid is entertainment, in reality, it assumes the shape of a dangerous propaganda. Reducing all the 4-5 centuries of Mughal rule with a single word 'invaders' is not the correct route. All it takes is a single drop of poison to make the entire glass of water poisonous. The venom in our thought we are sowing today will one day become a hydra that will swallow us with a disdain it reserves for the races doomed in their pride.