Democracy, Nuance and the The Revenge of the Fringe ..

In the pic: 1) 27 April 1994 , Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the first South African elections held without the discrimination of voters on grounds of race. It was the first time Mandela had voted in his life.

2) An infographic portraying the origin of all the languages in the world (Source: Ethnologue.com)

~~~~

Rogue One is the latest addition to the Star Wars saga. It highlights the daring mission undertaken by a rag-tag group of rebels (ordinary by Jedi standards but with a firm belief in the FORCE) to steal the Death Star plans in order to save the galaxy from an impending doom. Sorry, are you a bit confused that the title says democracy, the pic shows Nelson Mandela and here I am sharing spoilers of Rogue One? Please bear with me. We are definitely going to discuss democracy , lament about the lack of nuance in the current public discourse and talk a bit about a very 2016 phenomenon which I prefer to term as the “Revenge of the Fringe”. But I would like take generous inputs from Pop culture to make some sense here with your permission of course 🙂

So back to Star Wars then. Rogue One is a clear deviation from all the other movies in this George Lucas saga of Mahabharat proportions , because for the first time we come across characters who played a pivotal role in the scheme of things but were mere footnotes in Star Wars History, simply the Unsung Heroes. What Jyn Erso and her friends achieve by sacrificing their lives, offers a RAY OF HOPE to the Rebellion cause and ultimately lays the foundation for the fantastic exploits of Princess Leia, Han Solo and others in destroying the Death Star eventually.

Enough of Star Wars Mumbo Jumbo I say!! This brings me to my second pop culture reference, It’s a MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, a 1963 cult classic comedy of a madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers based on the last words of a dying old man.One of the strangers is a Truck Driver who gets constantly outwitted and out-maneuvered in the chase by the others who are slick , suave and well-healed and take advantage of his gullibility to derail his moves. But thanks to his determination , he always catches up and makes himself heard. In the course of the movie he is called STUPID but this truck driver guy gives it back when he says

“Then they all decide that I’m supposed to get a smaller share! That I’m somebody extra special stupid, or something! That they don’t even care if it’s a democracy! And in a democracy, it don’t matter how stupid you are, you still get an equal share! “

YES THE TRUCK DRIVER DID MAKE A CORRECT OBSERVATION. IN A DEMOCRACY, EVERYONE OF US HAS AN EQUAL STAKE AND AN EQUAL SHARE AS WELL.

2016 was a very bad year they said. Death blows were stuck to the Liberal agenda and the cherished notions of Globalization. Annus Horribilis !! Brexit, President Trump, Demonitization back home. But ask a Trump supporter or any one of the 52% who voted for Brexit or the Indian Anti-corruption crusader for whom the Black Money is the root-cause of the malaise that plagues our greatness, he or she will come up with a different world view and they are loving every moment of it.

Ladies and Gentleman, we live in a BI-POLAR world. A world where either you can be WITH ME or AGAINST ME. There is no middle ground. Sadly, there is no room for building consensus. We have all forgotten the art of agreeing to disagree.Democracy, my friends, is not a REDUCTIONIST CONSTRUCT. It is not an ULTIMATE or ABSOLUTE value. In fact the notion of democracy truly lies in its inherent ability of preventing the majority from imposing their choice over the direction that our politics and society might take.

2016 is definitely the year when the POLITICIAN failed to do his job. Yes, it’s the politician’s job to bridge the divide and heal the wounds. The reality was that conventional politics that champions Globalization and Free Market and bats for a borderless economy failed to grasp the growing feeling of disenchantment and disenfranchisement amongst a large section of the populace (Whom I call the FRINGE ) who felt powerless and left out from this so called Gravy Train. The politician should have swooped in on this opportunity , discussed and debated and legislated on a new more inclusive economic model .. but alas the so called Liberal politician abdicated on his duties and the inevitable happened. The FRINGE turned instead to a virulent ANTI-POLITICS in which facts and arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation where the Internet Trolls, the Nigel Farages , Donald Trumps and Marie La Pens ruled the roost.

Back to Pop Culture. After the end of Mad Men and Downton Abbey, I thought this was the end of a Golden Period of television. But the Crown saved the day (Narcos as well) and has been a revelation to say the least. For the uninitiated, the Crown chronicles the the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK. The Crown shows Sir Winston Churchill in his last years , resting on his past laurels of defeating the Nazis and hardly governing the country thanks to his failing health. Ask any Briton about Churchill, and you will see the halo of a world statesman whose magnificent oratory and iron-clad leadership helped save the civilization from the Third Reich. But ask an Indian historian, he might point to Churchill’s infamous role in denying assistance to Bengal during the Great Famine of 1943 which left millions dead out of starvation. Or the fact that he despised Mountbatten because he gave up India, the Jewel of The Crown. So how do we judge Churchill then ? You see there is never a black or a white, always shades of grey. It is a matter of perspective and hence our arguments have to be nuanced with facts and less with rhetoric or emotions.

Democracy is an ONGOING NARRATIVE. Democracy is a Compromise where the Middle Ground has to be reached. When I speak on merits and demerits of demonitization, I should not been branded either a JNU jholawala or an RSS Sanghi. I can be a devout Hindu and still fight for Mohd. Akhlakh’s right to eat whatever he chooses to. And You have the right to disagree. I may believe that free trade is the economic model to follow while you may bat for a socialistic model. We both may agree to disagree but the moment we cross that line of decency or try to suppress the other person’s opinion, we cease to be a democratic society. We can’t say to the other person with a divergent opinion in Pablo Escobar style “Plata or Plomo”. Escobar doesn’t work in a democracy. Let us debate and discuss and endeavour to keep the narrative moving into a better and brighter future. The day we surrender to the Internet trolls is the day we renege on our promise to uphold our democratic ideals.

Mitron, all this might have sounded too heavy for a 31st night. If you have gone through the 1000 odd words penned above, I thank you for your patience. My sincere apologies if my random musing has offended your sensibilities or dampened your celebratory mood.

Democracy is not about ONE SUPREME LEADER , it is about the faceless millions who tirelessly work to keep the SYSTEM up and running. That’s what Madiba’s life story and his prison term in Robben Island should have taught us. As the pics show, all of us share the same roots in language and culture and the fact that the notion of democracy has to be cherished at all costs

All right. That’s it. My FB calendar tells me that I have to attend 31st get together at Place du Marche by the lakeside where the whole of Vevey will descend to celebrate a New HOPE (again so filmy) and rejoice in unison irrespective if their caste, creed or colour or even the nationality (yes there are a lot of expats and I am one of them).

Happy New Year !! May the FORCE be with you ALWAYS 😀

Ending with one of my favourite quotes,

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

#HappyNewYear #RandomMusings #EatPrayLove

Paradise Lost

The Girl in Red Coat

 

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and for you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed the day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people passing by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
But what they’re really saying is I love you.

I hear baby’s crying and I watched them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.

~ What a Wonderful World

Rendered ever so soulfully by Louis Armstrong, this song has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to a child being born into the world and having much to look forward to.

It has been quite a while since I last took to blogging. But the human tragedy which unfolded today in Peshawar forced me to extricate myself from this self-imposed ghost protocol.

Ironically, just last week I had changed my profile picture to one that celebrated the cause espoused by this year’s joint Noble laureates Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay , that of eradicating oppression against children and upholding their fundamental right to education.

We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire,
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it.

~ Billy Joel – “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.

In 2014’s sci-fi movie Interstellar, the director Christopher Nolan directs a scene where low on fuel, the space-ship Endurance can only visit one more planet before returning to Earth. After a tense vote, the team selects Mann’s planet, as Mann is still transmitting. However, they find it to be icy and inhospitable; Mann (Matt Damon) always knew Plan B (start humanity anew) was the mission’s true goal, and faked data about his planet’s viability so Endurance would rescue him. Mann breaks Cooper’s spacesuit visor and leaves him to die, and flees to Endurance on a shuttle. How can a man of Mann’s stature and intellect and refined sensibilities, try to kill a fellow cosmonaut without batting an eye-lid. The survival instinct or is it an inherent strain of DNA which can explain such an act, dormant in some while active in others …

Today’s dastardly act is once again a chilling reminder that the world we inhabit has become more violent than ever. I find myself asking this question over and over again .. Is it in our nature to commit such terrible acts without an iota of remorse? Shooting down children at point-blank range , can it get any worse .. hang on .. Peshawar is just another blot on what can be considered a never-ending saga of mindless acts of barbarity which have been perpetrated with cold-blooded precision since we don’t know when. The same scene unfolds in Palestine every now and then or in Ukraine where a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane is shot down or in Swat Valley where a child is shot because she stood for girl’s education. That girl became the world’s youngest Noble laureate and continues her fight undeterred.

Or is it a different strain of human reaction, when a father kills her daughter, a Delhi University student who dared to tarnish the family’s honour by marrying a boy from a different caste. Or when a policeman pumps multiple bullets into an unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson , Missouri. Or when Nirbhaya pays the ultimate price with her life in the nation’s capital on another December 16, exactly 2 years back. Is it not the same mindset that made Baby Moshe an orphan when his parents were gunned down at the Chabad house during the nightmare of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Recently read a moving article published in the NY Times about a person who protested against Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza strip, by actually giving up all the laurels that Israel had bestowed upon him as a mark of gratitude for his role in saving Jews during the Holocaust.

Of-course strategic analysts, experts and the Haryana khaps will very well explain these horrific incidents with theories ranging from Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory to the CIA funding of Mujahideen to counter Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or for that matter wearing jeans to rising incidents of extreme brutality against women in a country which actually worships the Divine Mother as Adi Shakti. In an air-conditioned television studio, some retired Pakistani general will blame today’s massacre on non-state actors.But these theories simply don’t add up. Do they ??

Filmmaker Michael Moore, in his award-winning documentary film Bowling for Columbine , explores the circumstances that lead to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and, more broadly, the proliferation of guns and the high homicide rate in America. Early in the film, Moore links the violent behavior of the Columbine shooters to the presence of a large defense establishment manufacturing rocket technology in Littleton. It is implied that the presence of this facility within the community, and the acceptance of institutionalized violence as a solution to conflict, contributed to the mindset that led to the massacre.

As the new TV channel on air, Zindagi has shown, people on the other side of the border are almost our mirror images. They speak almost the same language and face the same issues in their daily grind for survival. The 132 children who died today in that army school in Peshawar , had the same aspirations like any school-going kid in my own country.

The world has failed its children, I dare say. What is the use of teaching Gandhi , Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan and Martin Luther King in classrooms when coffins have to be carried out of a school’s premise.

That brings me again to the question. Why were these children snuffed out of their lives ? Still don’t have the answer. Are the Malalas and the Satyarthis of this world fighting a losing battle.

An eye for an eye …. the MAHATMA had said, but the narrative hasn’t changed a bit. Of-course we did reach MARS and discover the GOD particle somewhere in-between all this but we never stopped being violent, did we? Blood will be spilled , in the name of honour, in the name of race, in the name of unearthing imaginary Mass Weapons of Destruction, and of-course in the name of religion !!

As I came back from office today, with all these disturbing thoughts hovering in my mind, I noticed my neighbour’s 2-year-old daughter playing in their courtyard. Seeing her, I could only manage a wry smile. For she is blissfully unaware of how admirably the so-called adults conduct their worldly affairs or growing up what kind of strife-torn world she would inherit..

Maybe it is futile to look for answers, my guess .. it is human nature , maybe something else which made sure that 132 flowers were nipped in the bud.

I usually end my musings on a slightly positive note. But today it is hard to betray the emotions , ok .. maybe a tad optimistic by quoting the song that Haider’s doctor father used to hymn amidst all the gloom and doom that surrounded his beautiful valley.

~ Chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka kaarobaar chale
Gulon mein rang bhare baad-e-naubahaar chale ~

‪‬

In the Picture: Schindler’s List: While the film is shot primarily in black and white, a red coat is used to distinguish a little girl in the scene depicting the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto.