Death Sentence and others

1.

I am puzzled by the boisterous and brazen display of euphoria by sections of the Indian public – mostly, the aspirational middle class – at the death sentencing of a foot soldier of terrorism, who in my comprehension is a terribly rudderless, impoverished, destructive and an indoctrinated fellow (that he is a criminal and a mass murderer by the law books is not in question). The genesis of such hysteria has something to do with the way 26/11 was televised on national television. English educated anchors from elite institutions – national and international - otherwise proponents of liberal democracy in chat room discussions went ballistic and jingoistic losing almost all sense of objective reporting. They were dishonest to their profession: not by default of course but by design. TV caters to the aspirational and upwardly mobile middle class. And, this class generally produces top-notch servants engaged in sincere lobbying work for the hyper-rich: their interests and policies. As such, TV must reflect what they do, aspire to do and mostly, create a perfect cultural network that would validate such interests and policies. War and security are big-time business. Sometime after the 2nd World War the CIA invested huge sums of money in insurgency operations in various countries to suit to their foreign policy strategies. This created an invisible but massive transnational industry of terrorism and caused the rebirth of a very different kind of political Islam. This model was later replicated by many countries. The investments made in Pakistan have been colossal. Terrorism, like all State militaries, recruits its foot soldiers from the most impoverished and decimated families. Terrorism justifies war against terrorism and creates two kinds of businesses directly: for the military contractors and the construction contractors (once, landscapes and waterscapes are destroyed in wars). International funding agencies pitch in with development funds for such reconstruction. At a macro-scale it is a joint venture of various agencies: military contractors, construction contractors, State militaries, terrorist organizations, international funding agencies and political institutions (they help in rallying public opinion and mobilizing support of citizenry so that there is least public hostility to this joint venture). In this interconnected matrix one is inseparable from the other. The impoverished lot supplies foot soldiers on a sustained basis because for them extinction is an on-going reality, and tragically, it is the impoverished lot who suffer the most in terrorist outbreaks. One may be happy in granting a death sentence to one of the lowest-rung faces of terrorism but one must not forget that this is what the brains of terrorism also want because there are innumerable such faces in the queue to replicate one long lost face. Would it not have been more daunting to try to take a hard path to unravel with honesty - the machinations of how terror networks function and the details of their brains and nerve centers - through this foot soldier? But quite clearly the State is not interested in doing that. The State has vested interests in not letting out such truth out in the open. Because that might prove a long held conjecture that: The State’s security agencies representing the State (this is true for almost all States) and the terrorist organizations are two mouths at opposite ends of the same dragon. TV pitches in with the right dose of emotional flapping while reporting a heinous terrorist attack so that we are mediated with frenzied yearnings for retributive death of its foot soldiers, quite easily forgetting that with the death of each foot soldier dies material evidence of the nexus between big players in the background.

2.
Aparajita and Pratidwandi – both films by Satyajit Ray – are two of my most favorite films. I am generously exposed to world cinema. I have watched these two films innumerable times; I have seen many other classics multiple number of times. In the last five years these two films have communicated to me a few things which went unnoticed during my younger days. Aparajita now raises an eternal question in my soul: How ethical and wholesome is your search for personal education, enlightenment and prosperity having left (almost abandoned) your mother – alone, sick and impoverished – in the decaying darkness of a dwindling village home? Similar questions were raised by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina through Levin in its concluding chapters. I think this question can help us look at modernity in its most truthful image. The modern world has sadly even altered the ferocious (otherwise natural) love and bonding between siblings. Pratidwandi reflects a strange love between an elder brother and his younger sister in a lower middle class Bengali (refugee) home, and that is not the main story of the film (mind you). It is a mix of protective brotherly love, anxious paternal love and combative love that exists between lovers. The elder brother is silently (not overtly) in search of a species of birds; his sister is in deep love with its voice having listened to its crooning and whistles (together with his elder brother) during a childhood rendezvous. A year back I had seen this film with my son. He foxed me with an embarrassing question: Do you love your sister this much?

3.
A friend of my son announced a few days back: Kaku, we are likely to be flooded with C grade Universities from the west; thanks to the new Education Bill! What will happen to our Universities like … (he named many including the one from where my sister has done her Doctorate and I have graduated), institutions built on years of hard work, sincerity and imagination? I did not respond. I only realized once again: How lopsided is this battle between the East and the West! How much the East colludes with the West in self-annihilation!

4.
I will start writing a drama very soon: a crime thriller with a mother and a daughter relationship at its core!