TsuNamo2.0

TT

TsuNamo 2.0 is pounding the opposition with a velocity unimaginable-almost with a nuclear intensity. The results have banished the brother-sister duo, the Bhuva-bhatija duo, the MGB castle dream of Chandrababu Naidu and Mamta as also the imaginary dreams of KCR and YSRCP of being the Kingmakers  There is no need to wait for Congress to leave for exile , if not for Agyaat Vaas(living incognito) for the next five years. In fact the scholarly Professor Yogendra Yadav has expressed a death wish for Congress, though at no time he extended his party Swaraj India to support Congress in its fight against Goliath, the non-sicular giant.  Following Yadav’s pre-mortem analysis, there will be a whole lot of post- mortem wisecracks on the irrelevance of Congress. The FM, Mr.Jaitley had written a clairvoyant blog a few days back that the Congress of today is a non sequitur.  The floodgates of social media will be thrown open to millions of posts waxing eloquent about the non Lutyen, non Khan Market philistine warrior demolishing the well heeled, angrezi educated Harvard and Oxford returned pretenders to Indian culture and civilization. The media channels will be patting their backs for their accuracy in predicting the results while the newspapers will be full of articles on “didn’t I say so?” In this melee, hardly will there be an analysis of what went wrong as the enthusiasm to be on the “right’ side will make all the media barons chant ‘Namo, Namo’ and speak about how Namo made the right noise at the right time, during his whirlwind tour of India , how he .was on Maunavrat on tricky disturbing issues of his sarkar for the last five years,    how the chaiwala emerged from a cave in a sartorial outfit that would put to shame all those millions and millions of our saffron robed sanyasis....

 I write this with a stuffed laddoo in my mouth( I have taken a selfie  I can show if needed) I for fear of being lynched if I do not participate in the Laddoo festival. I do not want to be called anti national and bumped off to Pakistan. The one good thing about the Laddoo festival is it somehow lessens the noise pollution with the Bhakts’mouths stuffed with Laddoos, arresting the “Namo’ chant from reaching a crescendo. As for the losers, they don’t even have a voice to squeak. Sitting at home watching the numbers flashing on the TV screen, I have switched on the ‘mute’ button to give some rest for my ear drums from the excited cry of the anchors and their chosen commentators for they all know the way to Modi’s heart is through the ears.

In the quiet of my home, I sit and try to analyze what has caused this TsuNamo? The youth knew that jobs were not there for the asking, the farmers  have had the most stressful five years with increasing number of suicides, the economists were worried about the decline of economy and alarmed over the fudged data put up by the government to say all is well with economy, liberals were aghast at the decline of secularism, freedom of speech and all institutions established for just and honest governance, educationists were disturbed over the loss  of autonomy  and the covert efforts to encourage private universities at the cost of Central and State universities, the critics of the government were dismayed over the draconian arm of the CBI and the police to house arrest honest people who raised their voice for justice,  the brushing aside of all inquiries about Rafael deal, about the Nirav Modis and Chokseys , the total avoidance of any mention of its non performance  and last but not the least the divisiveness that have been brought within India in these lastfive years …. And despite all these TsuNamo has drowned everyone of the opposition and liberal intellectuals.

The simple answer is  this is the victory of frenzy over rationality, best  seen in the victory of Pragya Sadhvi with her fulsome vitriolic against Hemant Karkare and Gandhi, her extolling of the fall of Babri masjid ( and her own contribution to this mighty act) . The hype over nationalism by showing all those opposed to Modi as anti nationals , the macho image of the leader crying like our ancient kings “Aaakraman”  and prodding the otherwise lazy, fun-loving soldiers  to fly and bomb Balakot, his deafening silence over the number of our army men killed in Uri, Pathankot and Pulvama  but shattered by a photo-op with Abhinandan to show the oozing of the milk of kindness and grace,  and his war cry  with lies and half lies and barbed attacks on the dead and forgotten PMs of the past, created the right hysteria that got translated into votes.

Leave aside all these. The undeniable truth is all those who believed in the old values of decency, honesty and truthfulness have been relegated to  the dustbin. These are old timers like me now inching their years into the seventies and eighties. Not much is left of them to fight irrationality with rationality,

hatred with compassion, prejudice with objectivity, frenzy with moderation.  Whatever is left of our  frail energies to speak of fair means towards a destined end  was uttered  sotto voce lest we should be trolled and labeled  as antinationals. Our geriatric  group is slowly on its way to oblivion and the new generation has not shown any inclination to follow us as that demands a great deal of intellectual exertion. There is a perceptible decline in IQ among the youth and the middle aged groups and all their so called information is from twitter that  demands the least exertion to think and analyze. Twit-twit-twit, instantaneous online shuttle shots. No time to spend on in depth understanding, thinking and forming discerning judgement. Even in developed countries of Europe and America, we notice the slow spread of intelligence crisis. In India also we see this decline in cognitive skills. In a thought provoking article Evan Horowitz writes “One leading explanation is that the rise of lower-skill service jobs has made work less intellectually demanding, leaving IQs to atrophy as people flex their brains less”.  Our educational system in India right from CBSE to graduation is tailor made to cater to the lowest common denominator.  The young men and women who come to college and universities and the school leaving 18+ boys and girls are hardly tested on their problem solving abilities .As such these crucial years which constitute the learning period are frittered away as no demands are made on them to apply their minds to larger social , economic and political issues of the day. Barring the really bright students who form a miniscular minority(and who disappear going  abroad seeking newer pastures) , the average youth is getting dumber and dumber and experiences a steady decline in intelligence. Skills are no substitute for intelligence in making analysis and  discernment that is so essential for the preservation and sustenance of democracy. To quote Evan Harowitz “a global intelligence crisis that undermines humanity's problem-solving capacity and leaves us ill-equipped to tackle the complex challenges posed by AI, global warming and developments we have yet to imagine.”

It is not a question of who is winning  but what bothers me and should bother every right thinking individual is how is one  winning. Do we succumb to hysteria and frenzy over hyper nationalism and hyped up patriotism or do we learn to understand and be discerning on questions that are knocking down the very foundations of democracy? Can we have the courage to raise questions “was it a fair poll?” or demur in fear “All is fair in war and elections”. The victory by a huge margin seems to me a pyrrhic victory for it has annihilated the opposition that is a major force in democracy.

As I write this the skies have opened to heavy thunder and lightening. I do not know what this thunder means, but I know the last lines of the last section “What the Thunder said” in T.S.Eliot’s poem The Waste land . The lines are Datta, Damyata, dayadvam

                                               Om shantih ,Om shantih, Om shantih

The poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant “Datta, Damyata, dayadvam/ OmShantih Om shantih, Om shantih”—the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

N.B. I am neither a Lutyen nor a Khan Market hanger on. I belong to the average middle class, who had been educated in ordinary government schools and  colleges, , a person who had come up in life through hard work, a  self developed individual who had imbibed the philosophy of the East and the West and a proud practitioner of Gandhian  thought and ideals of simple living and cultivating humanity,  a modest academic who follows Tagore and understands nationalism as an inherent part of larger humanism.

TsuNamo 2. has come again. Though the full results are a few hours away, there is no need to wait for Congress to leave for exile , if not for Agyaat Vaas(living incognito) f or the next five years. In fact the scholarly Professor Yogendra Yadav has expressed a death wish for Congress, though at no time he extended his party Swaraj India to support Congress in its fight against Goliath, the non-sicular giant.  Following Yadav’s pre mortem analysis, there will be a whole lot of post mortem wisecracks on the irrelevance of Congress. The FM, Mr.Jaitley had written a clairvoyant blog a few days back that the Congress of today is a non sequitur.  The floodgates of social media will be thrown open to millions of posts waxing eloquent about the non Lutyen, non Khan Market philistine warrior demolishing the well heeled, angrezi educated Harvard and Oxford returned pretenders to Indian culture and civilization. The media channels will be patting their backs for their accuracy in predicting the results while the newspapers will be full of articles on “didn’t I say so?” In this melee, hardly will there be an analysis of what went wrong as the enthusiasm to be on the “right’ side will make all the media barons chant ‘Namo, Namo’ and speak about how Namo made the right noise at the right time, during his whirlwind tour of India.

At home I have stuffed  a laddoo  for fear of being lynched if I do not participate in the Laddoo festival. I do not want to be called anti national and bumped off to Pakistan. The one good thing about the Laddoo festival is it somehow lessens the noise pollution with the Bhakts’mouths stuffed with Laddoos, arresting the “Namo’ chant from reaching a crescendo. As for the losers, they don’t even have a voice to squeak. Sitting at home watching the numbers flashing on the TV screen, I have switched on the ‘mute’ button to give some rest for my ear drums from the excited cry of the anchors and their chosen commentators for they all know the way to Modi’s heart is through the ears.

In the quiet of my home, I sit and try to analyze what has caused this TsuNamo? The youth knew that jobs were not there for the asking, the farmers  have had the most stressful five years with increasing number of suicides, the economists were worried about the decline of economy and alarmed over the fudged data put up by the government to say all is well with economy, liberals were aghast at the decline of secularism, freedom of speech and all institutions established for just and honest governance, educationists were disturbed over the loss  of autonomy  and the covert efforts to encourage private universities at the cost of Central and State universities, the critics of the government were dismayed over the draconian arm of the CBI and the police to house arrest honest people who raised their voice for justice,  the brushing aside of all inquiries about Rafael deal, about the Nirav Modis and Chokseys , the total avoidance of any mention of its non performance  and last but not the least the divisiveness that have been brought within India in these lastfive years …. And despite all these TsuNamo has drowned everyone of the opposition and liberal intellectuals.

The simple answer is  this is the victory of frenzy over rationality, best  seen in the victory of Pragya Sadhvi with her fulsome vitriolic against Hemant Karkare and Gandhi, her extolling of the fall of Babri masjid ( and her own contribution to this mighty act) . The hype over nationalism by showing all those opposed to Modi as anti nationals , the macho image of the leader crying like our ancient kings “Aaakraman”  and prodding the otherwise lazy, fun-loving soldiers  to fly and bomb Balakot, his deafening silence over the number of our army men killed in Uri, Pathankot and Pulvama  but shattered by a photo-op with Abhinandan to show the oozing of the milk of kindness and grace,  and his war cry  with lies and half lies and barbed attacks on the dead and forgotten PMs of the past, created the right hysteria that got translated into votes.

Leave aside all these. The undeniable truth is all those who believed in the old values of decency, honesty and truthfulness have been relegated to  the dustbin. These are old timers like me now inching their years into the seventies and eighties. Not much is left of them to fight irrationality with rationality,

hatred with compassion, prejudice with objectivity, frenzy with moderation.  Whatever is left of our  frail energies to speak of fair means towards a destined end  was uttered  sotto voce lest we should be trolled and labeled  as antinationals. Our geriatric  group is slowly on its way to oblivion and the new generation has not shown any inclination to follow us as that demands a great deal of intellectual exertion. There is a perceptible decline in IQ among the youth and the middle aged groups and all their so called information is from twitter that  demands the least exertion to think and analyze. Twit-twit-twit, instantaneous online shuttle shots. No time to spend on in depth understanding, thinking and forming discerning judgement. Even in developed countries of Europe and America, we notice the slow spread of intelligence crisis. In India also we see this decline in cognitive skills. In a thought provoking article Evan Horowitz writes “One leading explanation is that the rise of lower-skill service jobs has made work less intellectually demanding, leaving IQs to atrophy as people flex their brains less”.  Our educational system in India right from CBSE to graduation is tailor made to cater to the lowest common denominator.  The young men and women who come to college and universities and the school leaving 18+ boys and girls are hardly tested on their problem solving abilities .As such these crucial years which constitute the learning period are frittered away as no demands are made on them to apply their minds to larger social , economic and political issues of the day. Barring the really bright students who form a miniscular minority(and who disappear going  abroad seeking newer pastures) , the average youth is getting dumber and dumber and experiences a steady decline in intelligence. Skills are no substitute for intelligence in making analysis and  discernment that is so essential for the preservation and sustenance of democracy. To quote Evan Harowitz “a global intelligence crisis that undermines humanity's problem-solving capacity and leaves us ill-equipped to tackle the complex challenges posed by AI, global warming and developments we have yet to imagine.”

It is not a question of who is winning  but what bothers me and should bother every right thinking individual is how is one  winning. Do we succumb to hysteria and frenzy over hyper nationalism and hyped up patriotism or do we learn to understand and be discerning on questions that are knocking down the very foundations of democracy? Can we have the courage to raise questions “was it a fair poll?” or demur in fear “All is fair in war and elections”. The victory by a huge margin seems to me a pyrrhic victory for it has annihilated the opposition that is a major force in democracy.

As I write this the skies have opened to heavy thunder and lightening. I do not know what this thunder means, but I know the last lines of the last section “What the Thunder said” in T.S.Eliot’s poem The Waste land . The lines are Datta, Damyata, dayadvam

                                               Om shantih ,Om shantih, Om shantih

The poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant “Datta, Damyata, dayadvam/ OmShantih Om shantih, Om shantih”—the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

N.B. I am neither a Lutyen nor a Khan Market hanger on. I belong to the average middle class, who had been educated in ordinary government schools and  colleges, , a person who had come up in life through hard work, a  self developed individual who had imbibed the philosophy of the East and the West and a proud practitioner of Gandhian  thought and ideals of simple living and cultivating humanity,  a modest academic who follows Tagore and understands nationalism as an inherent part of larger humanism.