Smriti Irani won't weep for the real Bharat Mata
TV serial artist-turned politician, Smriti Zubin Irani, who emerged as the privileged one to start her political career as India’s HRD minister, appears to be living in the tinsel town where everything, including nationalism, can grow on trees or pour out of the national flag.
No wonder that her latest diktat is to have the tricolor fly atop a 207ft mast in the heart of each of the country’s central universities.
It is high time the prime-time serial actress understood the difference between the melodrama overdose in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and the real world. Building emotion in the name of nationhood on the small screen, or the silver screen, is not the same as imbibing nationalism among common citizens - particularly among the youth, who just do not believe in the tradition of infusing nationalism through cursory rituals. And sure enough, nationalism cannot be injected into the blood stream like steroids.
Utterances could well make all the difference for a screenplay, but in the real world, what matters is the deed (or the misdeed), more than the spoken word. I am not holding any brief for those who raised anti-India or pro-Pakistan slogans (if any). And if they did, such people deserve the severest condemnation.
Yet, however, even objectionable utterances could sometimes be the result of utter provocation. But deeds are, more often than not, the demonstration of pre-meditated and willful thoughts.
Smriti Irani’s histrionics in Parliament have received accolades from various quarters. However, what everyone seems to overlook is that some credit is due also to the poor scriptwriter and the researcher, who armed her with all the arsenal for the well-orchestrated performance.
I can understand her pain and agony over the “insult” to Bharat Mata on account of certain alleged utterances by few JNU students. But I am still trying to fathom why the hearts of most self-proclaimed nationalist Indians do not bleed when other more serious and far more disdainful acts are committed across the length and breadth of the country.
A true Indian’s heart would bleed when innocent little girls are raped in broad daylight; when young couples are hacked in full public view for daring to fall in love with someone not belonging to their own caste, sub-caste or "gotra" or "khap"; when women are burnt alive by dowry - hungry in - laws and subject to all kinds of misery by their husbands; when little children are exploited in every possible manner by all and sundry, particularly by their insensitive employers; when government campaigns go about propagating the advantages of mother’s milk before a mother who survives on "roti and namak"; when cops unleash terror on poverty-ridden souls who go seeking the "khakhi" intervention against injustice by their rich and wily oppressors; or when the lands records of a poor, illiterate farmer are manipulated by a scheming and corrupt revenue official, or for that matter, when the local "mahajan (moneylender)" thrives by continuing to exploit the needy in just the same manner as it was picturised in the legendary Mother India.
I wonder why Irani’s heart does not bleed when the unholy nexus of "netas" (irrespective of party) and the bureaucracy goes about stripping the country of everything they can lay their hands on; when Mother Earth is exploited by the mining mafia to serve vested interests; when the nation’s policies are twisted to benefit a few; or even when no effort is made to unearth the black money stacked well within the geographical boundaries of India.
I am sure there is a large number of people who are misusing and abusing the nation in very many ways right under our nose every day. Their ways are sometimes subtle, and sometimes blatant. But because such acts are seen as a matter of routine, one finds it convenient to overlook – apparently because that seems to be the easy way out. Confronting serious issues is not everybody’s cup of tea, so more often than not, hard pragmatic solutions are deferred for tomorrow.
The most unlawful, heinous and seriously objectionable anti-national acts tend to get ignored while utterances become the easy target – as if to say that the spoken word causes deeper injury than the physical act, even if that amounts to digging the nation's grave.