Au contraire!

In these dying days of the UPA regime, to make up for lost time, our opinion-makers are busy clearing a backlog. Hardly a day goes by without a valiant new signature campaign, or a last-gasp effort to save secularism for posterity, or recalling gas chambers and concentration camps. The masked and bibbed writers thrust and parry, thrust and parry, rattling their sabres in a vigorous bout of eleventh-hour fencing. It is almost as though these Achtung Journalists have taken it upon themselves to save the Idea of India from the talons of Fascism and Totalitarianism. They dream of swastikas and toothbrush moustaches, they hear the approaching rumble of goose steps, they watch their beloved India turn into a Pakistan, but they refuse to wake up to reality. They are the new Buffalo Soldiers – stolen from Socialism, brought to Secularism; Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.

Don’t get me wrong. Reproach wrapped in gorgeous language is a thing of wonder. These doomsday writings are a mix of controlled – at times uncontrolled – contrarianism, where the writer operates on the principle that a sword with running ink is mightier than the pen. To have it any other way would be a tragedy, for the readers, for the nation, for Democracy.

Dwindling they may be, contrarians are a necessity in today’s world. They raise our antennae, by virtue of which one is forced to read them with extra attention. When they castigate someone who in your opinion didn’t merit castigating, every spiteful word is consumed with care. “What is he talking about?” “But this is so wrong!” “Now he’s gone too far!” are just some of the phrases assembled by your Broca even as the brows turn chevron, the BP rises and a yearning to not just use Disqus but to pirouette half a dozen times and throw it in the general direction of the writer overwhelms you. It is only then that you realise that the writer’s job has been accomplished – his writings are now etched permanently where you didn’t want them. You can shake your head like a drenched dog but there’s no way to get dry.

Well, here’s the thing: pain only induces a desire for more pain, and self-flagellation is but a whiplash away. Siss-zzzipp ! Manmohan Singh has been a great Prime Minister. Whoosh-thwackk ! The Congress party is the true torch-bearer of secularism. Muzzzzump-fizzatt ! Gujarat’s development is financed by harsh sub-nationalism and crony capitalism. Whizzzing-splatt ! The Idea of India is threatened if the NDA comes to power. Ouiizzing-zapatt !

         “I mean it, when I analyse the stench,

          To me it makes a lot of sense…”

What has got our Buffalo Soldiers in a bind; what has got their collective goat? After all, the goats until now were at complete freedom to graze pastures bought with untold black money and corruption; they were at complete liberty to plant their forelimbs on a tree trunk and munch the greenbacks. But the Buffalo soldiers don’t seem to remember this. They don’t seem to remember that India is a democracy, and in a democracy governments move in and out constantly. They don’t seem to remember that the present regime has been the most corrupt in independent India’s history. They don’t seem to remember that it has commissioned scams, ruined the economy, bribed journalists, planted stories, caught the innocent and let-off the guilty. They don’t seem to remember that under the garb of secularism this government and its allies have peddled communalism. The soldiers don’t seem to remember any of this.

So what do they remember? They remember the pleasant to the touch status-quo and they yearn for it. They remember the untold rewards through fellowships and committee memberships. They remember the wah-wahs and the requests for encores at fixed television debates. They remember PMO entourages and business class trips to places they had never previously seen. They remember the dinner parties and the book launches and the giggles and the nibbles. They remember the life that they had led, but not the life that they had written about. They remember a cocoon. And slowly, over the years, they remember wrapping the cocoon with their silky threads over and over and over again until it became tighter and tighter. This they remember. But life under wraps has only stifled the pupa, preventing it from transforming into something that could take wings.

The cocoon must be unwrapped now. It is time.

It is time for the Buffalo Soldiers to lay down their swords and pick up their pens, time for them to be critical of people on facts not fantasies, to relish the job of being a contrarian but not take it to such an extreme so as to threaten departure from these shores.

A new government heralds a new beginning for India and her people. It must not be allowed to cultivate the habits of its predecessor, to rest its head on the cushion of nepotism and sycophancy, and fawning and servitude. It must be taken to task when it fails on its promises. Who else but the contrarians to help it keep to the straight and narrow?

So arise, sharpen your pens and celebrate democracy and the will of the people. There is a job to do, and you are needed like never before. Fight for our survival, not yours.