May 22 I used to write political/social commentary columns for years. Came a time when I started to feel like I had said all I had to say in that vein - really - so I do very little of it now.
But once in a while I feel there's something that needs saying. Like last week, when I watched someone I know and like, the author Amish Tripathi, on a TV show. He was asked to comment on the ongoing court battle over the Gyanvapi mosque that Hindus claim was built on a demolished temple. I was struck by all that Amish said, and not in a good way. So here's a response to some of his comments that I wrote for Scroll.in: https://scroll.in/article/1024390/truth-as-a-disinfectant-amish-tripathis-platitudes-ignore-the-lived-reality-of-many-indians Your reflections welcome. yours, dilip --- Truth as a disinfectant: Author Amish Tripathi and his platitudes about Gyanvapi The first time I met the celebrated author Amish, we were sitting outside a theatre at the NCPA, looking out at a sprawling temporary bookstore. We introduced ourselves. To my continuing regret, I had not heard of him. But he had heard of me. "Hey, I love your mathematics columns!" he said. Then he ran in among the books, bought one and ran back to me. It was one of mine. "Sign it for me!" he said. That kind of bloke. In the few times we've met since - including once when we missed a flight in Jaipur - he has been unfailingly generous, gracious and warm. So when I watched him on a TV programme recently, offering not so much the forthright sincerity I know him for, but woolly platitudes instead, you can imagine my disappointment. The programme was an interview with Sonia Singh of NDTV, focused on the ongoing tangle over the Gyanvapi mosque. ( https://www.ndtv.com/video/exclusive/news/gyanvapi-mosque-case-more-than-faith-this-is-about-says-author-amish-tripathi-633420). Amish said plenty, starting with this pithy phrase: "More than faith, this is essentially about the truth." True enough. In that spirit, then, let me react to a few of the points he made. First, "where India is different [from] Turkey and other countries", Amish said, is that "the majority is dharmic and liberal, they wait patiently, sometimes for centuries." This is why, Amish went on, "I could not advocate any hatred." That's reassuring. But is it really necessary to list the innumerable recent cases of hatred and its consequences? Well, maybe it is. Let's try just a few. Think of Mohammed Akhlaq, slaughtered by his neighbours who suspected that he had beef in his home near Dadri on the outskirts of New Delhi in September 2015. Think of the several young Dalits (lower castes) in Una in Gujarat in July 2016. Accusing them of killing cows, a “cow protection group” tied the Dalit youths to a car and beat them with sticks, rods and knives. Think of Pehlu Khan, lynched by cow vigilantes near Alwar in Rajasthan, in April 2017. Think of Mohammed Afrazul, whom Shambhulal Regar hacked to death and then burned the body in Rajsamand district in Rajasthan in December 2017, solely because Afrazul was Muslim. Regar was so proud of this atrocity that he got his nephew to film him in action. Amish does not advocate any hatred, certainly. Is he doing what he can to quench the hatred that burns inside Shambhulal Regar and so many like him? This hatred that maims and kills too many Indians? Second, it's not just about quenching hatred. Faced with questions about incidents like these and what they say about India, Amish says he likes to "look at the data." It tells him that "across the entire Indian subcontinent, there are only two countries where the proportion of minorities as a percentage of the population has actually gone up in the last 70 years, and one of them is India." That's reassuring too. But I have to wonder: what would Mohammed Ikhlaq have felt if, as his neighbours were lynching him, Amish explained to him that "the proportion of minorities as a percentage of the population has actually gone up"? What if this calm attempt to reassure Ikhlaq included Amish's conclusion about this proportionate increase, that it "shows that India is actually a decent liberal country"? The point: does the data allow us to wave away such savagery? Does it allow us to actually celebrate the men accused, for example when Ministers garland them ( https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/union-minister-jayant-sinha-garlands-8-lynching-convicts-faces-opposition-flak/articleshow/64901863.cms) or when we wrap them in the national flag when they die ( https://thewire.in/law/draping-national-flag-on-body-of-dadri-lynching-accused-by-bisada-village-unconstitutional)? What does such celebration say about being decent and liberal? A country of 1.4 billion, says Amish, will have "some idiots." No doubt. May we judge a country by how we treat those idiots? Third, Amish points out that "among our faultlines is also caste oppression." But he goes on to say that we speak of it "truthfully" and have "made compensation for it" by running "the biggest positive discrimination/affirmative action programme in the history of humanity." He means, of course, our long-standing policy of reservations, and he's right to point to it. Yet can Amish really be unaware of the tremendous backlash against reservations over many years? There's Rajeev Goswami, who set himself on fire in the midst of an enormous protest against reservations. There's the constant chatter about how the policy kills "merit". How often have you heard stories about students who use reservations being shunned on their campuses? How often have you heard people go on about doctors who benefit from reservations being incompetent and a threat to life? Amish asks: "Hasn't India actually improved in the last 70 years in terms of how the caste issue is addressed?" How would a member of our lower castes answer that? What would she have to say about caste oppression? Finally, let's return to something that Amish says is the "only disinfectant": truth. He's absolutely right to call it that. Which is why I'm going to list here, randomly selected, just five truths - or possibly, the lack thereof - about this country. Understand that this could be a much longer list. * Indians slaughtered 3000 Indians in Delhi in 1984. Nobody of any significance has been punished. * Official figures say the pandemic killed about half-a-million Indians. This number flies in the face of reason and common sense. Surely we owe our covid dead and their families an honest accounting of what they suffered? Because there's mounting evidence that the death toll is several times larger. * Indians slaughtered 1000 Indians in Bombay in 1992-93. Nobody of any significance has been punished. * Only a few months ago, the government announced that India suddenly has more women than men. This is so at odds with our documented reality over many years ( https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/more-women-than-men-to-tell-a-story-11641490850279.html) that "truth" is not a word that readily applies here. * Indians slaughtered 1000 Indians in Gujarat in 2002. Nobody of any significance has been punished. "True strength will come," Amish told Sonia Singh, "when we speak the truth, when we don't hide things of the past." So correct. So let's pick one of those five, then: the slaughter of 1000 Indians in my city, Bombay, in 1992-93. Let's stop hiding it and instead speak of it. Let's punish those killers right away. That would be some disinfectant. -- My book with Joy Ma: "The Deoliwallahs" Twitter: @DeathEndsFun Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dilip's essays" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dilips-essays+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dilips-essays/CAEiMe8r9_-6%3DUNeXyfCV02_eTt%2B-3U8xU8OpvMTAkEg%2B%3DZyY0g%40mail.gmail.com.
