The other day I was watching ‘Apocalypse’, a national geographic program on World War 2. Most of the recounting was done around Adolf Hitler and naturally so. Here was a man on a mission that seemed more personal than national. A patriot could never have jeopardized his nation on several different levels as he did. Not only was his desire for annexation of other countries insatiable, but his deviation led him to cause unspeakable harm to a race he didn’t like. He put Jews in concentration camps and fumed them up in gas chambers. There was footage of a 2-3 year old Jew child, looking snug in his overcoat, all smiles, trying to dance in thick snow as he and thousands like him were to be thrown into gas chambers in a few days. Now that kind of an image can stick to one’s mind and its hard to scratch it off.
Barbarous it surely was, but we have no option than to develop a kind of desensitization towards it because we all need to live. We need to put such horrifying odds and ends into a black box and throw it away so that those images don’t haunt us very often. As we block the images away, we can’t afford to block away the lessons which that dark part of history left us with. Hitler was a disgrace to a civilized human society. It is said that he didn’t like races that were non-aryans. So, if you didn’t like certain people, you’ll sponge them away? Who does Hitler remind you of in today’s time and Indian context? It shouldn’t take time to guess that. Yes, the Thakre gang. Why are we cultivating a whole bunch of Hitlers in our country? How can we even tolerate such people here, and how can the Indian government not put them in jail and give them each a never ending term behind bars? What is that one Indian thing that they have ever done? If they are so ashamed to be Indians, if they dislike hindi and people from other Indian states so much, why are they even staying in our country? When we see the government doing nothing and sitting pretty as these hooligans encroach upon people’s fundamental rights, become agents of disharmony, speak with utter disrespect, act hypocritically, talk irrationally, do nothing creditable other than pampering the exaggerated sense of their own attractiveness and power, all those stories about government having behind the scene link-ups with mobs seem true.
A few days back, Shobha De on a TV program was hesitant in lambasting one of the many undemocratic moves of Raj Thakre. Why a woman supposedly so impartial got in league with the country’s foe? The commonality of the maharashtrian factor got better of her and now no amount of logic would ever hide her mind, intention and the pseudo-ness of her justifications. When we talk of terrorism in Pakistan, we talk of how the apparition they created is now eating them away, how BJP may not shine again from under the rubble of Babri masjid, similarly supporters of the Thakre gang should realize that these mobs are dragons who if nurtured will one day swallow them up too. This bunch is bringing a bad name to their community and doing them disservice, which if not now will be glaringly evident in a few years time; but why should we always wait until something really unfortunate happen? We should clear the litter away before it’s too late and do our bit in creating a clean, just and equal society.
