The Internet Personified: Why I'm done being apolitical
Or quiet on the subject of politics at any rate
My friend,
I don’t know if I’d call myself patriotic. It’s become a weird word over time: patriot. It used to mean just a love for your country, but somewhere along the way it got mixed up with jingoism and nationalism and all sorts of words that end in “ism” and essentially mean that you get very violent and very angry whenever anyone suggests something wrong with your way of thinking. Now, I like India fine. In bits I am proud of the diverse nature of things: geography, climate, food, languages. It’s a nice country. It’s a pretty new country, which means we’re still figuring stuff out, but it’s nice. There’s stuff that’s not so nice, that’s pretty fucking horrible actually, but it’s important when you like something or someone to acknowledge their faults as well, so you can work towards fixing it.
Then, there’s Modi and his pal and arch-henchman Amit Shah. I do not think they are India, I do not think they are representative of the India that I like and that I belong to. I know they got voted to power, but I also know I could make that sentence look like this: “voted to power” and it would still be true. Modi bhakts (including some members of my own extended family) do not get this. They’ve forgotten the time when they felt free and easy to criticize the government, and they are all too eager to strip us of the right of voicing our concerns and disapproval. For Modi bhakts, this is the only time in Indian history that has counted (this and the time someone shot Mahatma Gandhi in the head, that brave man who put a bullet through the head of an unarmed elderly man who had always spoken pro-non-violence and preached peace.) (Okay, sure, you might have a buttload of problems with Gandhi, but can we all agree that he was very much FOR non-violent resolutions? Thanks.)
At this point, someone or the other will say, “But then who is the alternative?” and I will say, “Anyone is the alternative” but I know you want a clearer answer than “anyone,” because that just dilutes the vote, so: as central government, vote Congress. As state government vote for the party that is genuinely GENUINELY uplifting your state. In Delhi, that is the AAP. Don’t argue with me for the sake of arguing. Don’t even bring the slightest WHIFF of whataboutery into this, because I do not give a good goddamn.
Rewind: you might be a bit confused. This is not the usual whimsical content you usually get from this newsletter. I turned 38 this past weekend and it struck me that I have been unhappy with the way things are run in this country almost all through this decade. Today is December 16. Seven years ago, a young medical student was brutally gang-raped and killed in Delhi. Protests upon protests happened. Last month, a young vet in Hyderabad was killed as well. Except this time, instead of the police catching the culprits and them having to face the full force of the law, they were quietly taken to some dark corner and killed and people applauded this. Applauded the beginning of the end of the rule of law in India, the first little domino to fall. Because they did not think this through: sure, they were happy to see rapists die, but how do you know they were the culprits? How do you have faith in the police when they tell you that they were when you did not have faith in them to catch the rapists in the first place? And what happens when this sort of killing just becomes the easiest way to deal with people—no lawyer, no judge, no jail, just shoot them in the head and be done with it? First it’s the rapists and then it’s the thieves and then it might even be someone who accused someone more powerful of raping them. Oh wait, that already happened.
I imagine you like me, dear reader. You are numbed by current affairs, you cannot stand another social gathering where people just shout at each other and go around arguing in circles and nothing ever comes of it. You turn on your Twitter and it keeps refreshing with the next bad thing. You maybe tweet something funny in the lull, and then you like tweeting funny things, so you keep going. You have the privilege to turn away from politics, after all, you didn’t vote for the monsters in charge, you know no one who did, no one who is affected by citizenship bills or lock downs in Kashmir (how many months now?) and while you are upset, angered even by what’s happening, you’re also so tired and apathetic. Is there any point? You stand for the national anthem at cinemas because you don’t want to get into it and you’d rather keep your head than die for your principles. You fantasize about a country where everyone in power suddenly dies and there’s no option but to form a newer cleaner government. You know that the trolls, the Hindu hardliners, the people who believe cows have more rights than humans, will never go back in the box from which they emerged like the demons from Pandora’s box, but you also believe inside the box is Hope and she’ll flutter out every now and then and make you dream sweet dreams of a better world. It’s possible. It was right there within our grasp with everyone talking about corruption and a fragile old man deciding to pull a Gandhi and fast till his rights were met.
Anyway. Yesterday, as I watched students at Jamia Milia University being beaten and tear gassed (and some reports say sexually harassed with the lights turned of) because they were objecting to the CAB (which is complicated, but Broadsheet has a great explainer here), I began thinking of a BBC docuseries we saw a few months ago called The Rise of the Nazis. And I know “we lot” have been saying this and saying this and saying this, but it’s happening here, guys, and it’s not slowing down or stopping any time soon, so it’s time to amplify your voices so that when they discuss it in 50 years, you will be a part of the dissent, not just someone who sat around and watched. Of course I will continue the whimsy and the jokes on Twitter and the wardrobe on Instagram and all of it, because I enjoy it and you enjoy it, and we need some movements of enjoyment as well, but I will also be registering how firmly I stand against the current regime. Far against it. We can’t let the kids do all the work.
I do have some links to take away from all my ranting:
Are you a cat whisperer? Take a quiz of cat faces to find out.
I ADORED Chiki Sarkar’s Nobel ball diary.
Reese Witherspoon turned shit around for herself. (I found this inspiring.)
And Bloomberg does an annual “jealousy list” of all the stuff they wish they’d published this year.
Have a great (and thoughtful!) week! Next week I will be publishing my annual list of the best books I read this year (culled down from about 150 contenders), so please forward to whoever you think would be interested.)
x
m
Where am I?The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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