In India, we have this phrase known as bhaad mein ja. It roughly means go and get burned in the furnace or the fire stove. Metaphorically it implies go and rot in hell. One usually says it in anger or just frustration from life or people. Over the course of this present decade I feel as if the society overall was going through its bhaad stage. The people and the world were still recovering from the recession or lite-depression, climate deniers of the world were on the rise, we elected a megalomaniac who oversaw the massacre of thousands of innocent lives. That moment itself felt like a tipping point. That day the idea of my country changed. The idea of a liberal, secular, and a free country started to dissipate as the belief that my country would never voluntarily elect someone like him was crushed, and with it the idea of India. When we realised what we had done, it was too late.
Around the world, we also saw the rise of other megalomaniac dictators in the last decade for example Turkey, the rise of right-wing parties in Germany, France, UK, Hungary. But it was the moment when Donald J. Trump was elected as president of the United States of America, that all hope of humanity's retaining an ounce of it faded away. It felt as if the people of the world were actually bored of being in the bhaad. So they got together and thought lets go beyond bhaad, lets burn the world even further so that the posterity don't even find the ashes. So, the last requiem for humanity was sung and its echoes could not save the world from going into what I call 'Post-bhaad samaj'.
Post-bhaad samaj, is a place where hatred and bigotry not only run loose in the society but the forces that were meant to punish or condemn them are the ones making them legitimate. It is a samaaj where the fallacies in democracy are exposed. It is a samaaj where dissent is seen as sedition, where free-speech becomes hate-speech, where ideas becomes intellectual terrorism, where new histories are manufactured and written to solidify a parochial notion of the society, where the killers of dissenters are honored with garlands, where hypocrisy is so ingrained that it has become a crime not to be one, and where misinformation spreads like wildfire but facts and truth get marginalised.
Now this sounds all too ominous, but it is the truth. They say you can tell a lot about a society with the leaders that they have elected. Therefore, we don't have to look anywhere else but in the mirror as it is we who are to blame. We've changed as a society. We didn't scare so easy, we didn't give in to our prejudices, we didn't kill someone for not agreeing with us, we didn't give in to hate, we aspired to be a better society but have failed miserably. History will see us as the generation that failed all humanity.
But there's always hope. There has to be otherwise it all would seem pointless. I believe that there's still hope for all of us. We need to overcome the hatred and bigotry, which has become banal, in order to save us from ourselves. We need to look the next person in the eye and tell him/her that we love them. We need to fight for the rights of not only ourselves but also for others who are too weak to fight for themselves. We've got to speak up for the ones who've been told to shut up. We the people, of the world, need to choose our leaders responsibly as we can't afford to have leaders that legitimize hatred and bigotry. Therefore, the fight to get out from this Post-bhaad situation needs to start now, this very moment. There will be obstacles, there will be haters, there will be losses, but if we want to regain the lost freedom and dignity for all, we have no other choice but to fight.
Around the world, we also saw the rise of other megalomaniac dictators in the last decade for example Turkey, the rise of right-wing parties in Germany, France, UK, Hungary. But it was the moment when Donald J. Trump was elected as president of the United States of America, that all hope of humanity's retaining an ounce of it faded away. It felt as if the people of the world were actually bored of being in the bhaad. So they got together and thought lets go beyond bhaad, lets burn the world even further so that the posterity don't even find the ashes. So, the last requiem for humanity was sung and its echoes could not save the world from going into what I call 'Post-bhaad samaj'.
Post-bhaad samaj, is a place where hatred and bigotry not only run loose in the society but the forces that were meant to punish or condemn them are the ones making them legitimate. It is a samaaj where the fallacies in democracy are exposed. It is a samaaj where dissent is seen as sedition, where free-speech becomes hate-speech, where ideas becomes intellectual terrorism, where new histories are manufactured and written to solidify a parochial notion of the society, where the killers of dissenters are honored with garlands, where hypocrisy is so ingrained that it has become a crime not to be one, and where misinformation spreads like wildfire but facts and truth get marginalised.
Now this sounds all too ominous, but it is the truth. They say you can tell a lot about a society with the leaders that they have elected. Therefore, we don't have to look anywhere else but in the mirror as it is we who are to blame. We've changed as a society. We didn't scare so easy, we didn't give in to our prejudices, we didn't kill someone for not agreeing with us, we didn't give in to hate, we aspired to be a better society but have failed miserably. History will see us as the generation that failed all humanity.
But there's always hope. There has to be otherwise it all would seem pointless. I believe that there's still hope for all of us. We need to overcome the hatred and bigotry, which has become banal, in order to save us from ourselves. We need to look the next person in the eye and tell him/her that we love them. We need to fight for the rights of not only ourselves but also for others who are too weak to fight for themselves. We've got to speak up for the ones who've been told to shut up. We the people, of the world, need to choose our leaders responsibly as we can't afford to have leaders that legitimize hatred and bigotry. Therefore, the fight to get out from this Post-bhaad situation needs to start now, this very moment. There will be obstacles, there will be haters, there will be losses, but if we want to regain the lost freedom and dignity for all, we have no other choice but to fight.
2 comments:
Nice one!
Am I the only one who thought that Modi isn't as bad as the author makes him believe to be? How come he is 'ruining' India?
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