Me and the Country

The semester has just started, and as one might imagine, I am relatively free during this period. So I spent my time going over the older posts.
One characteristic that I seemed to find recurring in all my posts is how they all seem to revolve around myself....me, my views and my perpective of the universe in general. Now Varun seems to branch out here and there, but I appear to be more than a little obsessed with myself.

Not that there's anything wrong with it- I love myself...to the point of worshipping. When I have enough money, I shall probably erect a temple to myself, and pray there everyday.....moreover, I generally dislike the standard young man/woman. I hate Delhiites, Ranchiites, South Indians, Assamese, and people from all communities. I particularly detest the standard IITians. So it is but natural for me to focus on myself, or my blog would be more of a tirade against all humanity.

However, it has occured to me that this cynicism, in absence of a stronger word, may be an unwise policy. There is something I didn't add to my blog on Bangalore- that I was confusing myself with these thoughts there itself.

Now I am too arrogant to change my views on people - I refuse to take an interest in them. Of late I have discovered non-fiction books, starting with Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian. I read Shashi Tharoor in Bangalore, and since then the process of discovering my country has become increasingly appealing.

Of course, I expected the books to be boring in general, but I discovered an awful lot which made me feel completely ignorant as an Indian. Reading Tharoor's book, I discovered the whole history behind the Emergency, which has fascinated me a lot over the past month or so.

So now after much circumlocution I arrive at the subject of my blog- India.

The thing that pissed me off most of all was that we were never, ever, taught anything about India's own history-modern post-independence history that is. The few scraps of information that do trickle down to us through our parents, teachers, are generally dismissive. Indira Gandhi is made out more as the heroine of the 1971 war than someone who tarnished India's history of being a vibrant democracy. The Emergency is only famous for Sanjay Gandhi's notorious purge of the slums, and his 'nasbandhi' campaign.

After coming to college, I came across more and more of these scraps. Economists, and here I refer to renowned, internationally acclaimed Western economists, actually lauded the Emergency as being the only period in India's history (till 1977) when the country was being run efficiently. The Emergency is well known for the fact that after its imposition, so many governmeny officials turned up for work that they ran short of furniture. Trains ran on time, and corruption was practically negligible.

History is in general considered very boring, be it in Harry Potter or our own schools- but this history is not irrelevant to us, especially now. After the highly amusing skit in Parliament recently, this piece of India's own romance with a dictatorship evokes many interesting debates, one very important one being the very need of a democracy, and whether India should sacrifice popular opinion in favour of an efficient administration.

After reading a lot about the Emergency, I personally believe that Indira Gandhi might very well have got away with it if she hadn't imposed the nasbandhi policy. I mean, the middle class was happy, and who cares what the poor think anyway?(I am not complaining, I myself don't care what the poor think)...Even now, when I asked my parents and a few other adults about the period, they don't recall it as a particularly bad time. In fact, if anything, many people view it as something good.

And this is from well-educated individuals who read the papers and everything. Not just this, several of my college friends (I do have friends, in spite of my tirade earlier), are forever talking about how a dictatorship would be just the thing for India. Then we could sign all the deals we want, persecute all the terrorists we like, with no fear of backlash from th minorities, and so on.

This is a very appealing view, and I'm sure it must have occured to the reader, or you wouldn't have read this far.

Why or why not such a thing should be good for India makes a very interesting discussion, and I am not going into it- I am tired already. The only thing which does bother me is that we have had 60+ years of independence, and we don't seem to be too bothered about what has happened so far- we don't know, and we don't wanna know is the motto.