I have been watching the antics of the latest saffronite, Ramdev, and the writings of a P3-journalist-in-the-making, Manu Joseph, for some time now. The former’s vernacular sophistication matches the latter’s urban mundaneness. Between these two poles lies India’s misery and its miserable future.
The respected journalist, first. He does not like Ramdev, but is willing to bet his life on Indian politicians, even if they are bad. Why? Because they have a stake in politics and therefore, they will do what they can to do the right things. If he indeed believes what he writes, he should go back to journalism school.
As to the saffronite, I suspect two things. One, that he is genuinely mad. His utterings like ‘no need for high denomination currency notes’, his stance against gays, his argument that yoga can cure homosexuality, all these are rants. He is happy owing a Rs. 1200-crore empire selling oils and seeds and drugs and pickles and pani-puri masalas. Now he wants to extend his repertoire to solve social problems through yoga. I wouldn’t mind his antics as long as he is out of the public sphere with his brand advertisements.
The second is, if true, a more dangerous trait. He is a true saffron, unlike the fake saffron fiend, the BJP. Ramdev, well-versed in backward caste politics of UP, may have also concluded that the BJP variety saffron can no longer draw votes from the millions of Indian idiots; not because these Indians are lesser idiots now, but because these idiots are consumers now. What these fellows need is not temporal intellectualism, but a bit of temporal gratification of their consumerist cravings. Something like do a bit of tummy breathing to get into your Armani. The bearded man is adept at this kind of a thing. Perhaps he thinks the time has come for him to either give the BJP a push, or push himself into the centre of Indian politics. The poor Anna Hazare, ravaged as he himself was by subversive Indian industrialists and politicians, had already showed him the way.
I knew of this Ramdev fellow when he was in tatters, going round little places teaching pranayama. I saw him genuinely teaching yoga. I saw him grow popular as his camps grew. I now see his appetite grow as well. You need a genuine platform to articulate your fake ideals.
He rants about black money abroad. Does he publicise his company’s accounts? He rants about ‘zero technology’ Indian stuff. So, why does he move about in an American aircraft? There’s more which need not be dealt with here.
The thing to note is that a political public sphere in India today is informed by the likes of Manu Joseph and Ramdev. Anything more to be said?
Interestingly, Ramdev, I must say, understands the meaning of political timing. He began ranting about his political philosophy when the left, the centrist and right parties are in a mess.
The left parties, I sincerely hope, never recover from the shameful drubbing in West Bengal. For too long have they gotten away with violation of human rights, skinhead organizational culture and retrograde ideology. To borrow the ‘F’ word from Gordon Ramsay, they have truly F’d up West Bengal for generations to come. Any idiot who defends the Left Front policies, like the ban on teaching of English in primary schools for instance, is exactly that, an idiot. They liked the Red Book, so they indulged in spilling blood – of political rivals – for years in the state. They did not brook classes, so they permeated a class of their own in the state. They turned the people who did not leave the state for good into intellectual morons, bleating communist jargon they never understood, while the leaders helped themselves to wealth by all crooked means they blame the Congress of adopting.
The centrists. Actually, the Congress has always been on the ‘right’ of the centre, only the previous mixed economy model giving the impression that it is to the left of it. The after-colonials, as wily, vicious and cunning as their white masters, continue to occupy the moral central place in the country’s politics. And unlike before, cowards too. No single political class has so systematically eroded democratic institutions and discredited the country’s social and cultural structures as the Congress has done since Independence. I shiver to think if there would not have been another Emergency now had Indira Gandhi been the Prime Minister. Ramdev is lucky too as he would by now have been felled by army bullets, the pretext probably re-coined as ‘saffronistan’.
The rightists. The less said about them, the better. They murder people as in Gujarat, they bring down old buildings like in Ayodhya, they cause riots like all over the country, they escort international terrorists home, they have the country’s biggest neo-nazi, brownshirt organization, and yet they brazenly call themselves the saviours of Bharat. But they know their time is up. The muscles of their rascally political fronts are weakening, whether in Maharashtra or Delhi or Uttar Pradesh. They know people prefer Armani to brand Ayodhya. But they also know that the petty minds of the majority of their supporters can still be milked for political ends.
No wonder this political class, not tuned to a member of the civil society taking them on, was surprised when Anna Hazare took to the streets. Hazare has lots of faults with him. But at least he threw the first stone. What happened to him? He was desecrated by the people within days, by people – who else but stupid journalists and so-called intelligentsia – bothered more about their phony arm-chair arguments than the causes of the common people. And then steps in Ramdev. Again his detractors – the very same people – are wary. The leftists because they think he is saffron. The rights because they think he is a stronger saffron. The centrists because they think he is a fake saffron.
True that where Hazare was stupid, Ramdev is wily. Condemn them, but why condemn the cause? Because the cause is not lucrative. It involves too much giving and less of taking. What’s the use of a cause without profit? Now you can understand why these fake intellectuals on social media networks ravaged not just Hazare but also the Lokpal Bill proposal, why they will ravage Ramdev but also the accountability proposals.
They hate Ramdev because he bettered them at their own game. They are like the Manu Josephs who are already telling you that the corrupt politicians are better than Ramdev. They are the true status quo-ists.
What to do with them?
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