From uneasy to Solid

  

March 5, 2021

 

I feel uneasy, more and more uneasy, like I am not really present. Like even if I am, I can be blown away like a feather in a storm. I ask a question and there is silence. Somebody else talks as if I hadn’t spoken at all. 

 

It’s an unpleasant state to be in. I try to change it. But before that I try to define it. 

 

I think it, the state, is related to the things I am seeking to understand. I am having a hard time even pinning down the questions I want to ask, research, ponder.

 

I made a start and asked a few in an email group I am part of. I wondered how the complete co-opting of the Indian public was achieved by the current rulers.  I see how the Hindutva rhetoric, of India becoming a Hindu Rashtra, appeals to a certain mindset -- from all classes/castes, but wondered about those not interested in a Hindu nation -- what messaging had been able to hold them to the Modi ideal? What keeps them from seeing and reacting to the events around? What helps them normalise everything? Have answers to things, or quote the answers that the BJP IT cells pump out? 

 

Like the Income Tax raids on dissenters, or jailing of activists who obviously did not provoke violence, while those leaders that did being free and even making more hate speeches. How do they justify this? Or when freedom watch’s downgrade democracy in India they repeat that these organisations just want to defame India? They say we still have elections, don’t we. They don’t have questions about corruption in the ruling party, though it is fairly obvious. They don’t worry about GDP or un-employment. In fact a lot of them have stopped posting about anything political. Not a peep even when the world’s largest stadium was named after Modi. Though they all had made noise about how many statues and institutions were named after the Gandhi’s and praised how NaMo was humble. Right now though nothing at all.

 

Ya, I’d really like to understand how the current state of things in India has been achieved. When Gandhi was killed by an RSS member the RSS became a reviled organization in India. But slowly Gandhi’s killer gained stature, Gandhi himself lost it at first, and then was co-opted by the BJP, misquoted, to further their agenda. The extreme RSS ideology has infiltrated into many parts of society and nobody finds it strange at all. What was has been obliterated. I find my mind and my questions similarly obliterated even as I try to think.

 

Earlier I watched a man talk about the Freedom House report that had down-graded India from free to partly free. He said India had only fallen by 4 points and was at the top of the partly free category. From 2018 to 2021 India has fallen by ten points. But if you look at it yearly and the fall is only two or four points then I guess we can fall to the not free category and we won’t really notice.

 

I feel like an anomaly, a ghost, a figment of I don’t know what, most times. When I asked some of these questions in another group everyone went quiet and after some time someone shared a video about the success of India’s vaccination drive and how it is shipping vaccines to other countries. In another group I censor myself and don’t even ask these questions. 

 

Luckily this email group can hear me and answers my questions. They too are bewildered by much of what is happening in India. Someone in the group said that a lot of people prefer authoritarianism to the uncertainty of freedom. She said they don’t like to admit it though and thus pretend not to see the obvious signs that democracy is being dismantled. I think that one day even this unease will go, and they will admit that they are happy with dictatorship. Ya, I think that this will happen.

 

I feel solid when I read these responses. Or when I type this on my screen and my thoughts appear as visible black marks. I like that feeling.