|
Send
them on a Bharat darshan
FEW
countries in the world have bred poets and writers who, turning
against the straitjacket of the state, have quietly nurtured and
sustained a people’s revolution. In the former Soviet Union,
the writings of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov
and scores of others were the ‘‘life-air’’ of
people who, decades later, protested in favour of change. Such irony!
The same state that ordered that education be made compulsory for
all its citizens, could hardly later leash their wandering minds!
Within,
the growing ferment of the people, without, the determined propaganda
of the Cold War. How could the Soviet state survive this formidable
onslaught? Living in Moscow in the immediate aftermath of the disintegration
of the USSR, again and again I met Russians who genuinely felt that
‘‘out there in the West, there was so much freedom!’’
Travel abroad, especially since it was hardly allowed, became an
obsession. Amongst the only ways they could get out was to either
become a ‘‘dissident’’ or be invited to much-coveted
‘‘visitor programmes’’ of Western governments.
What
a story, but as India prepares exhaustively for yet another encounter
with the Pakistanis, the propaganda blitzkrieg of the West comes
to mind. What if we were to change the rules of the game and decide
that the mother of all gambles, the ‘‘chaupar’’
of the Mahabharata, should be played with the minds of the people
of Pakistan as stake. What, then, if the government and scores of
NGOs, foreign-funded and otherwise, were to open the floodgates
and let in young people and old, fat and thin, Muslim and Hindu
and Christian, newspaper journalists, child labour victims, do-gooders...
a hundred visas, no, a thousand a week for bleeding heart liberals!
Another five hundred for those who serve in the army. Two, three
or five thousand for those who ache to go back to their beloved
Lucknow or wherever else.
Let
these Pakistanis buy Indrail passes or IA tickets and see the mighty
length and breadth of India. Let them gently sail down the backwaters
of Kerala and find out for themselves that in 1957 the state elected
the first Communist government in the world — and which, in
the last election did not allow the BJP to win even one seat —
check out Kumarakom where one Atal Bihari Vajpayee penned down his
thoughts out of the luxury of a hotel resort. Let them wander through
the temple towns of Tamil Nadu and watch how the ‘‘pandas’’
here and in Puri and Banaras and Haridwar and Rishikesh fleece those
devoted supplicants to God like there was no tomorrow.
Let
them discover the magic of anarchic India. Let them figure out that
we are not obsessed with them, that we have our own romances to
nurture, dreams to die for and superpowers to emulate. That we’re
not the DAVP ‘‘unity in diversity’’ cliche or
the floats during Republic Day celebrations. That we have our Shiv
Senas and Ali Senas, hateful, mirror images of the other.
And
that we have our traumas as well. That we’re interested in
good neighbourliness, not in lighting candles at Wagah. That we
still can’t figure out why 500 young men had to die at Kargil.
It would help if they apologised, that is if they knew the answers
themselves. And that we wish to ask them a few questions about Kashmir.
But most of all, we wish to tell them that India’s not only
Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir, it’s dozens of more, unwieldy, imperfect,
uniquely different states.
What
then if New Delhi, even as it prepares to receive Musharraf —
author of the Kargil conflict — was to decide that Pakistan
is bigger than the Chief Executive-General-President? What if the
BJP government was to take a leaf out of the Cold War propaganda
booklets scripted to perfection by the West and find that it resembled
what the Mahatma once said (about opening the windows of his mind)
and, en route, help heal the emotion of Partition.
Opening
the door to Pakistan must be the biggest gamble New Delhi could
have thought of in 54 years. We’ve tried themes like ‘‘reciprocity’’
and ‘‘security’’ with little effect, otherwise
Kashmir wouldn’t be full of infiltrators and Delhi’s women
wearing some of the best Dhakai saris brought by Bangladeshis-without-visas.
And while we’re experimenting with Islamabad, how about enlarging
the canvas of the ‘‘chaupar’’ to include the
entire subcontinent. Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives...
Let the madnesses of the Indian subcontinent reveal itself!?
|
