It has always been a dream to see every Indian self-sufficient, be able to afford 2 square meals a day, able to celebrate every festival with the same fervour as any other Indian around him, be able to send his children to some of the finest schools, hopefully public! Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up in a country where only smiling faces abound! Well, it would just be Utopia by another name, but if dreams could be completely realizable, wouldn't they be reality instead?
But, today I am proud to wake up an Indian because every nook and corner has achieved self-sustainability! Our brothers in Maharashtra are out to prove that "they don't need no North Indians", the one's in the North-East have a grudge against every non-local around, the "Silicon Valley" has people who think that they can support the whole Indian IT industry without the "outsiders"!
The most "cosmopolitan" of Indian cities is being violated by a bunch of goons who think that their "master-lord's" wish to cleanse Mumbai of it's North Indian "immigrants" needs to be fulfilled at any cost, public property, law and order, human life, they all have no value attached to them! Of course Mumbai could always have run it's course without the Gujjus, the Marwaris, the Parsis, the teeming millions of "other" Indians who are as less important to Mumbai compared to the "locals" as are any two platelets extracted from a single person's bloodstream!
Of course, the North East has always had an economy of it's own, and the "Hindi-speakers" have only managed to spoil their pristine environment with their ulterior motives of infusing some self-sufficiency in their lives! Most of the people being "thrown out" or outright killed, belong to the "labour-class" of people - construction workers, rickshaw-pullers, factory workers - in short, people who already had a lot to worry about, people who didn't really care which "province" they belonged to, what language the people around them spoke. All they cared about was their day-to-day existence! Not even beyond that! But, of course, the so called "secessionists" (terrorists need sobriquets too, right!!) had better ideas! Now, the youth in the area can live their lives literally on a high, with easy access to narcotics, alcohol, weapons, and what not! They have managed to change an ancient mindset in Indians of being proud of having a "boy-child"! Today, a mother in that region, prays for a girl-child, because there would a lot less "opportunity" for them to fall prey to those newly-manifested evils!
Here in our beloved Bangalore (or is that renamed-at-the-cost-of-80+-crores Bengalooru!), there are people who believe that it is the "immigrant" population that has made conditions un-liveable, prices unaffordable, housing scarce and open spaces rarer still! What they fail to mention that the city itself came on the global map not because some Kannada person decided to make software for the world, but because many Indians, including a lot of smart Kannadigas, came together, and leave alone regional chauvinism, decided to take on the world with their soft-power! Their ideas knew no geographical boundaries, they brought to the average Indian, an opportunity of a life time, to rub shoulders with the best-educated western person, here on his own soil! The very skill of having a good grasp over the English language, made it possible for India to market itself to the world, and at the epicentre of all this, in Bangalore of all places, in order to gain some political mileage, the governing party passes a rule that strips parents of the right to choose the medium of instruction in the schools that their children go to, public or private! First, they decide to charge exorbitant amount of money from the "outsiders", for food, for housing rent, for public transport, etc, and when they themselves face the pinch of the artificial price-rise that was created by them, they blame the "outsiders"! They forget that many of them were lying in some lazy hamlet in some corner of the country and that the IT revolution gave them an opportunity to be a part of India's progress, by any means, be it running an auto-rickshaw, opening a serviced apartment service, a shop selling imported fruits/vegetables, or in the case of some more enterprising individuals, some ancillary start-ups to support the big names in the industry! Instead, they cry about the fact that the "outsiders" are making the city crowded, although they themselves belong to some far off village! They come up with the brilliant idea of marking the public transport buses with only the local language, and then cry about the fact that the "outsiders", with their personal vehicles, are crowding the roads, which are themselves worth another story, by the way!
I have personally lived, studied, worked in 8 different states of our great? country, including the north-east, the south and the north of India! In some places, people were quite affable, in some, very obnoxious! But, to be honest, wherever there was warmth, I was drawn to their culture, learnt their languages and with genuine interest participated with them in their festivals, celebrations, etc! But, now the new policy seems to be of "Command and Conquer"! Treat me with respect, show off what is good about your culture, show the brighter side of your lifestyle, and maybe I will be interested enough to add to the list of 8 Indian languages that I already have learnt! But, if you start pushing people, insulting them for not learning your language, making sure that because of your frustration, the next generation will be able to read/write in your language, which it would probably have anyway, but unable to mingle with the global market, let me assure you that you will only gain alienation! You will only be squandering the only chance you ever got!
I have always been proud of being an Indian, what with our vast heritage, the unity in diversity concept, the many unexplored corners of the country to discover! But, today, I am forced to think that this pride is only left in the text-books! Our people will only be sold to the concepts of caste, race, religion, language! Barriers all, but the only identity many under-achievers have! They will cling on to these with their lives, and take others' if need be! Most of us literates (by my definition, not every literate is an educated person) consider it a waste of time to enroll for the elections and to vote but raise a lot of hue and cry about the political manifestoes, the work that the politicians do or not! We are a nation of hypocrites, and lets face it, many of us are no longer proud of it, although they would love to do so again!
Let's not let the 3% idiots "rule" the 80% brilliant minds! Let's not let the country be held to ransom by another team of "Gujjars" who made their backwardness official at gun-point! All you need to do is stand up and be counted - at the polling booth, at every public place where order should be maintained, by not looking away when someone needs help, or something needs to be stopped! Let's give up for one, on the "chalta hai" attitude! Let's, for once, decide what will it be, a proud and mighty nation in the text-books, but a collection of warring factions in reality, or maybe the Utopia that it could have been!
