Ravi Shankar to Vijay Mallya: Modi's India and the art of living it up
A former colleague of mine working in a senior capacity for a reputed international media organisation and based in East Asia had told me a couple of years ago, during casual exchanges of notes on interviewees' proclivities, that a Bangalorean who recently flew away from India with thousands of crores of rupees owed to state-owned banks, would not acknowledge a greeting or question from journalists unless he were addressed as "Doctor".
No comments on how the worthy obtained that claimed doctorate, needless to say.
I narrate this as a few online friends have been commenting on another erstwhile Bangalorean, a double-prefixed guru with global reach currently hogging national - and partly international - limelight given his clout with the central and municipal governments in New Delhi.
Their comments followed a brief post of mine on a social media site:
Mister Mister Ravi Shankar was a contemporary of mine at St Joseph's College in the early 1970s when it was on Residency Road in Bangalore.How come the hair on my slowly balding pate is all white or peppery while Mister Mister Shankar's is jet black?
And why does Bangalore have no river running through it so I could've had a snowflake's chance of imitating my distinguished college-mate's feat assuming I could've commanded his billion-dollar plus political clout? Most of Bangalore's lakes too have been encroached upon by builders beholden to the BJP/Congress goons, the circles Mister Mister Ravi Shankar moves in.
Then again, Thanks - Many Many Thanks - Mister Mister Ravi Shankar, for choosing to do this in Delhi, rather than in Bangalore!
Phew!
Why do I refer to the worthy as Mister Mister Ravi Shankar? Because "Sri Sri" is not part of the name his parents gave him and are prefixes he gave himself in his quest for global glory.
While writing in English it is preferable to translate honorifics and not be pretentious by using, as some British publications used to, Herr (German for Mister), Monsieur (French), Signor (Italian) and so forth.
But to get back to some reactions I had to my post on a social media site wherein also I alluded to a certain now deceased guru who sported an Afro hairdo - again jet black obviously - until his eventual death with far too many questions hanging in the air among not only those who did not buy into his "miracles", but also those perturbed by allegations of violence, to say no more than that, on his premises that were never investigated thanks to the fact that presidents and prime ministers, not to mention mere chief ministers, senior police officials and members of the judiciarywere in his pocket:
One of my online interlocutors mentioned a certain living guru being like Grigori Rasputin, the debauched mystic from early 20th century Russia. Wow! A truer comparison with what is happening in India now and especially in its capital might be hard to find. And there are other Rasputins about, including a Yoga teacher-cum-businessman who has a vast network of shops touting pills and potions of questionable quality. Not to mention a darling of the current powers that be who is accused of rape but is deemed a "saint" in school textbooks in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Rajasthan.
But let me switch to a more positive note. I've been visiting St Joseph's College, now on Langford Road, about a kilometre to the south of its original location, often lately as it is one of the few venues in Bangalore daring to permit hosting of meetings on themes challenging the current BJP-Congress policies that are clearly anti-Adivasi, anti-Dalit, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-slum-dweller, anti-street-vendor, anti-bus-commuter…
On Friday and Saturday, while Mister Mister Ravi Shankar was despoiling the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi, I was at St Joseph's listening to Shehla Rashid, the eloquent vice-president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) explaining that JNU was about diversity and no-holds-barred discussion, something the close-minded folk drunk on khaki-knicker regimentation cannot stomach.
And she told us what real empathy for survivors of soldiers killed on the border ought to consist of: it ought to be an anti-war position, so that the poor footsoldiers are not sent to die while politicians from the two sides across the border meet in five-star hotels to cynically engage in inconclusive discussions over the tops of the absent peoples of Jammu and Kashmir - including Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others - and of the "Azadi" (freedom) that a majority of JNU students and of its faculty have in mind - namely freedom from caste oppression, from communalism and from neo-liberal policies dictated by western powers and home-grown tycoons.
Incidentally, in arranging the talk by Shehla Rashid, the organisers faced tremendous police harassment starting the previous afternoon and ending just two hours prior to the event. This only goes to show that the BJP and Congress, the current ruling party in Karnataka, are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Nevertheless, that the organisers prevailed at all engenders the hope that the current Indian regime led by Narendra Modi and with its rapacious industrialist backers and Rasputin-like guru friends shall face robust resistance, that the left-liberal forces have the backbone to stand up and push back at attempts to stifle free speech, and ultimately, defend democracy itself.
Already, the two ex-Bangaloreans who've been in the news have been lampooned widely for their Art of Leaving and Art of Living It Up and the government has been pilloried for letting one flee - the same government that last year offloaded Priya P Pillai of Greenpeace - and another take over a river bank and stage a huge tamasha that panders to the Hindutva vote bank.
For vast numbers of people, such as the Adivasis facing state terror, there is no bread but there are circuses aplenty in Delhi. From Hyderabad Central University, from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, JNU, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai to Bangalore, voices are rising up against this cynical rule.