Mother of Democracy

September 13, 2023

 

I woke with a lot of agitation — some good, some unpleasant — this morning. I had barely slept because the mind was active and heavy with memories of painful interactions, and dreams of betrayal kept waking me up, so trudged through the morning hours and got to my desk late. 

 

I have got into the habit of copying one or two chapters of the Tao Te Ching every morning before I work. It grounds me and soothes stress. But today I decided to stay with the agitation and write here instead.

 

I have been attending a play writing class and for that we had to first find an idea to work with. The first step in good play writing. Then go on and create a question that could be answered with a yes or a no, and the shades in between. I of course wanted to work with nationalism and democracy. 

 

Meanwhile in life these questions also floated around with things like the G-21, the presence of a certain kind of coverage and absence of another. Me trying to find sources that would fill in the missing bits of the picture provided by lap dog media. This along with the difficult interactions helped clarify what I would work on in the play. One-sidedness and manipulation are the micro ideas, by micro I mean detailed in a very personal situation, I want to write around, and explore how both are detrimental to true nation building. 

 

I used to be terribly and self-righteously one-sided at one time. I felt I had to be so to express the marginalized side in a conflict. I don’t like that part of myself so much anymore. I feel like this one-sidedness prevented me from seeing anything else, but more so it prevented me from listening, from softness, and from compassion for an individual because I was so aligned with a cause while the other was aligned with another. The other reason I don’t like it anymore is that I saw how it also prevented the other person from listening to me. And with both not listening no shifts happened. Shifts are needed for change. Ideally now I still want to stand for what I believe in but also stay open to understand where the other side is coming from and hope to create a dialogue even in the midst of battles. 

 

The thing though I hate even more is stating one is neutral while being entrenched in one position. Sometimes perhaps the person can’t see themselves and thinks they are neutral but other times it is a front they put up to manipulate and ‘persuade’ others. 

 

And it is because of both these that I dislike the BJP so much. They pretend to be neutral. It’s best I write from specifics. At the recent G-21 all participants were handed a booklet which had Bharat the Mother of Democracy. The next page had PM Modi saying he was proud to represent the mother of democracy. I had to laugh but I was so pained by this too. India was always at best a struggling democracy and has back-slided into authoritarianism in the last years. And there no evidence of democratic rulers in India's history. Perhaps the ruling party does not understand democracy but more likely it is manipulating perceptions.

 

Again let me be specific. India now stands at 161 out of 180 as far as press freedom is concerned. People will laugh at this number and say it is a conspiracy of the west against India. But with most/all mainstream media now being owned and controlled by corporates or individuals closely connected to the ruling party and funded (tax-payers money) through advertisements by the ruling party there is coverage filled with absences and bordering on both hate speech and propaganda. The government is perfect and needs no critique is the picture Indians are shown. The supporters of the government will say but look at all those youtubers always criticizing the government. If press freedom were dead, they would be behind bars. Well in my opinion the government has calculated that their viewership is small compared to the lap dog media viewers that the government can afford to let them be. In fact by letting them be they can maintain the illusion that press if free. 

 

So the Government calls itself the representative of the Mother of Democracy, Bharat, but has cultivated an army, media and foot-soldiers whose only purpose is to one-sidedly cut down every critique of the government and re-inforce the superiority of Hindus in our so-called democracy. It works best this way. Pretend neutrality so you stay light and clear while having your army do the dark work of hate. 

 

And unfortunately, the Foreign leaders, particularly Nato countries, have chosen to allow the PM to perpetuate this as shown by the recent G-21. Do they care for democracy? And do they think that the down-slide of democracy in India will not ultimately affect their own democracies? With a country set to be the largest population in the world it is obvious that the ideals and values of that country will spread through the world, particularly as other democracies allow it to represent itself as a democracy.

 

I don’t know why ‘India that is Bharat’ even bothers to keep the mask up. Any thoughts?

 

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone but me. What are the holes here that I do not see? 

 

Anyway this being said I can do other things now. 900 plus words, decently strung together (I hope), in less than an hour — good writing practice.