As expected, it happened. After all, our politicians have
lost one game, of not being able to maintain their duplicity in the public eye.
They cannot lose the other.
Thankfully for us, some of them had felt embarrassed then.
Now to be thankful to them, they do not want to embarrass them anymore for such
silly overtures and baggage from the past.
Indian politicians of the time have become synonymous with
everything negative in the terminology of the Indian socio-political scenario. In fact, it can be said they have effectively
redone the political science terminology where they see the universally accepted
‘negatives’ in positive ‘luminescence’.
And so, they cannot lose the other game in the series of
the ‘game of the throne’, of telling the people that this time they are
going to walk the talk what if they could not do it earlier by failing to
maintain the spectacle where they looked like following a life of probity.
Okay, if that didn’t click, better to change the rules of
the game. Why any spectacle, why any cover-up?
Why to bother about the relics of the past even if they
happen to be the thoughts of the forefathers of the Indian Independence?
If the earlier set was not feasible, why not go for the
next one, in the Indian case, the antithesis of what was envisioned in the
August of 1947.
Why to take so much of pain when the other, easy and shortcut
way to the riches is available? All it needed was to change the parameters
where the nation was to be ticked off from the priority list and the self-serving
political goals were to be placed at the top.
After all, pain and labour was for the likes of Mahatma
Gandhi who could not even think of arranging for the better future of even one
member of his family. Selfless saints like the Mahatma are indeed a learning
lesson for the politicians of the day. It reminds them where not to falter. It
tells them to secure their political career and riches for seven generations of
their clan first.
The process of comfortably forgetting the Mahatma had
begun much earlier and in last two decades, the Indian politics has even shed
the guise it was putting on to look following the ideals and thoughts of the
forefathers of the Indian Independence.
Many in the country are well aware of the family trees of
the many of the political families ruling India now and amassing riches but
how many of us know about the family tree and history of the Mahatma’s family?
Not many would vouch for it.
The present breed of politicians has successfully played
it out after it decided that following the Mahatma was not feasible for
it in an India
that was giving an open access to establish its own kingdom and many associated
fiefdoms (for the reasons we all know now).
And in order to maximize their efficiency, they threw out
the little headache, the laborious efforts to look sincere and honest, and joined
the theatre with no guises, playing out in pure documentary style, without any
make-up – where they openly accept that they are here to breach the trust of
their voters; that they are here to subvert every definition of ‘probity in
public life’; that they are here to see the democratic India envisioned in 1947
and expressed in 1950 effectively killed.
And, for the moment, they are looking well settled in their
game.