Are social institutions like faraway dead stars? Looking at a star, light-years from earth, we are not sure that the star is still alive, we are still seeing it from the past - it might have been dead thousands of years ago, but its death wouldn’t yet register on us.
Similarly, cities (like Mumbai) might have died years ago, but still continue to live (though the decline is visible.) Charles Correa, noted architect, says:
“Cities grow—and die—much faster than we think. Visiting Calcutta today, it is difficult to understand how turn-of-the-century travellers could have deemed it as one of the great metropolises of the world—the finest east of Suez, a jewel in the crown and so forth. Could they not see the grave (perhaps terminal) illness that was already tightening its grip on that marvellously humane city? No, obviously there is a time lag during which calamity is not overt. So that late into the 1940s and 1950s, we still couldn’t see the fatal symptoms—the writing on the wall.
Obviously this is true of Bombay. As it is getting better and better as a city, and disintegrating (very rapidly and quite unnecessarily) as environment. Perhaps what the people of Bombay are experiencing is the last burst of energy—the spastic twitches before the end. Living in this city one wouldn’t notice it oneself.”
Many of the companies (earning mostly maintenance/legacy revenues) might have died years ago, but have sustained as the revenues are still flowing. It’s been years since Microsoft turned out a decent innovation (some would say it never did), but is one of the most valued companies in the World today (Apple’s market capitalization overtook Microsoft’s only recently).
Has the idea of India died? The muck we live in today is much different than the India envisaged by its founding fathers. A Raja, Madhu Koda and Suresh Kalmadi have replaced Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru as the founders of the Modern Indian Nation. Today we inhabit the nation these gentlemen have built – a nation where every pillar of the systems has crumbled: we elect Mafioso to the parliament, where chief ministers swindle land, army generals own tracts of land in cities, influential media-people morph into deal fixers, and the retired Chief Justices don’t even bother to refute corruption accusations by senior counsel.
The idea of India died long ago- we are living through its funeral.
osted by Bhushan Y. Nigale
Is the Idea of India Dead ?
ReplyDeleteI really don’t know how to respond to the short piece by Bhushan. On the one hand his concern and disgust cannot be faulted ; on the other hand his frustrated lamentation seems totally out of place.
Is it right to have a fixed idea of a nation , and that too of a nation like India which existed millennia before nation was conceptualised and defined as a political entity?
Have not nations survived more corrupt politicians and governments ?
Don’t we , in spite of corrupt politicians, have a clean scholar at the helm of affairs and , despite the dynastic implications , a decent lady like Sonia Gandhi to back him ?
Is the idea of India so feeble as to be killed by Kalmadis, Rajas and Yeddiyurappas ?
Isn’t a nation, in the real sense always in the making and evolving ?
Isn’t the Indian judiciary firmly in saddle, though one feels that at times it is overplaying its role ?
Etc…..etc
The idea of India , in my opinion will never die; it is my great anguish to see intellectuals having stereotype nightmares of death and funeral in their impotent rage. Like the doyen of Hindi poetry, Dinkar had said ,
“ Gyanaki aradhana dinaka shayan hai”…. To sleep at night and dream is normal; going
to sleep during the day is abnormal and will surely guarantee nightmares.
--Vinay Hardikar