Friday, April 08, 2016

Betrayal

When I asked my daughter, studying in Delhi, to visit a good friend of mine during Holi, she fumed in mock anger, "Those Aaptards!" Conversation ends.
Today we Indians are divided into two main categories. Modi can easily represent the one and the other is congress, Aap, CPM etc. I have clubbed the rest in one because Modi is their common enemy.
Before I knew a strange trend/ideology came up. 'Anti India' - any thing which is directly associated with India is condemned by some people. Hinduism is the main target.The other Indian religion, cricket has also got affected. I was at my wit's end when I read about anti India slogans shouted at JNU. Anti Hindu is still ok in the garb of 'freedom of expression', but Anti India?
Coming to the title of my post, see the series of betrayals I, an average Indian had to face. Betrayal by very definition means when you are cheated by someone you trusted. JNU, IITs, IIMs were awe inspiring or beyond my reach institutions. In that campus I got to hear obnoxious things about Bharat Mata/ India. Now I will have to tell them that Bharat Mata is not a woman sitting on a lion etc etc but just a symbol that we love our country as we love our mother.
Media. Going back to Doordarshan days I remember relying on newsreaders for the correct pronunciation of certain words. Watching News just to observe the newsreaders. All the ladies were awesome. Then there was 'The World This Week'. An NDTV product, which we never used to miss. Believed each word it aired. Today the same NDTV and rest of the media is biased. I seldom get to watch achievements of government on TV or newspapers.

Nobody can be closer to your heart than your favourite writers/columnists. As he/she shares his secrets and passions while he bares his heart in his books. We relate to what we read and the one-sided affair begins. I too followed a few columns. Today when I share those columns with some of my friends who believe in Modi's hard work and Piyush Goyal's crusade against darkness, they don't even open the link. The moment the name of the newspapers appear they delete it. I fight and shield my dear columnists in vain. But my admiration got thrashed when I read abt the JNU chanting in a hypothetical statement in ‘The Hindu’ that if Modi wins 2019 election 'anti national' would not be able to survive in India and would create a new nation to live. What sinful thinking! I too don't run around streets shouting 'Bharat mata ki Jai' but why scream in your fb status that you would never say this slogan. I wonder if we thought alike about Kishore Kumar, RDB, Sholay, and thousand other things then why can’t they see any development in railway, power and coal, road transport and other ministries? The same ‘The Hindu’ we subscribed, far away in the North while preparing for Civil Services, with hope and dreams in our eyes.
Meet Shashi Tharoor. I almost prayed for him, a fellow Indian, but he lost the topmost post of the UN. We all felt bad.The same Tharoor was speaking at JNU. He mentioned Bhagat Singh and took a pause and the whole crowd laughed mockingly. I was in tears.

I never imagined that a large number of people will be unhappy when India wins a cricket match. Can there be a bigger betrayal than this to an Indian?






No comments: