Posts Tagged ‘emergency’
Maldives doing an Indira Gandhi
Reading today about the emergency declared in Maldives by President Abdulla Yameen was sort of a déjà vu. If you think back to 1970’s, India was a similar country and Indira was a similar leader. She also declared emergency amidst a war on judiciary.
There is a sense of oneness when it comes to such autocratic leaders. They portray themselves to be strong but also as a victim. They claim that world is against them, everyone is conspiring and they alone are standing strong. It’s only they who stand between the glory and the peril of the nation.
To this date sycophants justify the emergency using highly imaginative reasons. I recall one theory. But for emergency, western intelligence agencies would have run riot and destroyed India. We would have been left as a radical land just like our neighbors. To keep the ‘imaginary’ adversaries out, Indira had to declare emergency.
Yameen is doing/will do the same. Opposition and courts are in cahoots with foreign powers who want to destroy the nation. Only he alone can save Maldives and its population. What else is new?
Maldives is a strategic partner to India and given the emergence of highly active China, India is forced not to make too much noise on the developing situation there. Ethical thing is to criticize Yameen’s actions and work with other countries to bring back normalcy in the country. Given that China will then side with Yameen, India seems helpless.
Since we have our own checkered past, who are we to preach anyways?
Indu Sarkar: Trailer, like nothing before
I just saw the trailer of movie Indu Sarkar, a movie about the atrocities of Emergency, a black chapter of lust for power. I came to know about emergency quite late in my life and have always wondered why? The dark chapter of our history should have been part of our school curriculum, but it never was. It was as if it never happened. A reason why such a movie was never made before today is simple, the dynastic rule never ended. The more I read about emergency, the sad I felt that judiciary, intelligentsia and media of the day knelt down in front of what they called Iron Lady, and they still do.
I always wondered why people voted her back post emergency and continued with the dynastic rule. Maybe we needed to grow as a nation to get out of bonded mindset. Maybe the internet and free knowledge needed to reach to deep interiors of our country to bring people together. I feel we have almost reached there. Movie like Indu Sarkar, if trailer is anything to go by, is bound to change the manufactured history of our nation. Couple of hard hitting dialogues stood out. Dialogues which should have been the part of our national psyche, but they never were.
“Bharat ki ek beti ne desh ko gulam bana ke rakha hua hai, doosri beti se ummed hai azaadi ki” (One daughter of India has kept the nation enslaved; it is up to the other daughter to free the country). Chilling! It took the nation good 40 years to reach here. But I am happy that we finally have strength to say it out loud. We were enslaved. Struggle against emergency was nothing short of Third War of Independence. It should have been celebrated like one, but it never was.
“Tum log zindagi bhar maa bete ki gulaami karna” (You continue being slave to mother and son, your whole like). I couldn’t control my emotions hearing this. So relevant even today! It makes me sick and sad watching septuagenarian leaders bowing to mother and son just to keep their position. Mind you, we as voters were equally culpable, coz we as a nation were ready to serve mother and son, then and now.
But the time seems to have come to say it out loud. Time has now come to absolve ourselves of the sin of electoral mistakes we made. Time has now come to absolve us of the slavery. Indu Sarkar might not turn out to be as hard hitting as its trailer, but it is a step in right direction nonetheless. A step towards mainstreaming the atrocities the nation faced.
I don’t expect the movie to be celebrated by the media and intelligentsia. I don’t expect the movie to be celebrated by the nation as large, as we all were culpable in our choices last 40 years. But I expect it to be a start for a brighter future. Only after accepting and internalizing our failures and mistakes, do we become better.
The story needed to be told. I’d say it came not 40 years late, but it came on time, whenever it came.
Of Tormentors and ‘So Called’ Saviors
Lying down, old and tired, I am wondering what is happening? I have faced a couple of attempts to my life, a whole lot of diseases, bouts of indigestion. My will to live and level of immune system let me sail through all these hardships all these years.
As a newborn, my father was taken away from me. A fanatic shot and it was curtains. I learned to live without him. I had an amputation right at my birth. I felt extreme pain but braved the surgery to survive. I had a troubled childhood. Before I was 15, I had couple of attempts on my life already. Such had been my lineage. A part of my head still has scars from deep cuts as reminiscence of those attacks.
I was teased regularly by people in my neighborhood. However I always helped them. I stood up for lady next door. Her husband used to beat her up daily. I said enough. Gave her enough will and support to divorce that evil man and find independent existence. Alas! That lady never was grateful. Tried to mug me a couple of times!
I found myself all chained up and locked up for a number of years by a dictator. I felt so helpless and full of resentment. One day I finally burst of anger and broke the shackles. Dictator was thrown off only to be back. Sometimes I wonder what was wrong with me. Was it my humility and good nature that they exploit?
I was labeled mad. Was subjected to mental shocks. All to get hold of me. I resented and survived again. I was attacked again and again and again. I saw bystanders just whistling and looking the other way. I witnessed them being bribed not to help me. They knew I was being tortured but they were kept placated by my tormentors.
I have grown old now. I don’t hold anything against anyone anymore. Just when I am trying to relax, having gone through a tumultuous life, I see a lot of those bystanders coming back. They say they are trying to save me. I am not sure from what.
They say they won’t let me get hurt. I am not sure from what. I ask them to go hunt my old tormentors if they are so concerned. They go silent; they say nothing.
They just keep on saying they will save me from what is happening. I am not sure what that is. I ask them to get lost. They say they won’t tolerate such intolerance.
Who am I? I am India.
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