Walk Alone

I’m back to thinking some more about the people I love to hate, despite the fact that some of my trusted colleagues and acquaintances come from them. Let’s see - I got two more pet peeves.

How was your Diwali? And the weeks leading up to Diwali itself? Mine was noisy and smoke-filled. Guess who did I have to thank for that? I did not see a single person - not one - who was not a member of this community bursting crackers and flares.

Another eccentricity of these people is their penchant for eating off food-carts. Every day I walk home from the train station, I pass a 500 metre stretch of S. V. Road taken over by food-carts and converted into a food court. I mean, WTF? If you love eating out, as in eating food that is not home-cooked, then go to a restaurant or a fast-food joint. There is no need to patronize the hawkers right out on the road, people!

Another thing that baffles me about Gujaratis is the almost fanatical trust they have placed in Modi. FOSS and GNU/Linux geeks are (traditionally) politically liberal - you wouldn’t expect one of us to support a guy like Modi. But apparently, I was wrong. Even my afore-mentioned colleagues are die-hard Modi supporters.

To be honest, before Godhra, the only black spot I had seen was his continued support to the Sardar Sarovar Project. Even that was not as much an issue against Modi as against the Gujarat government - all governments before him, irrespective of political hues, had supported the project. I remember a weekly news magazine had published a special report in January 2002 about how Modi was effectively bringing Gujarat back on its feet an year after the Bhuj earthquake. And I agreed - here was one superb administrator - it seemed as if he was trained by Kautilya himself.

Then dawned the 27th day of February, 2002. A crime was committed against humanity that day. Those who gave its victims the shroud of religious indignation also gave the criminals the armor of religious persecution. A crime for which retribution could have realized within the limits of law and order was turned over to the “public court”. And there lay Modi’s mistake.

Nobody wanted those savages to go free. Hindu, Muslim, atheist, secularist - everyone was rooting for vengeance. Kay said it best in Men in Black:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

To this animal was handed the baton of justice, vengeance and vigilance. This animal was told of an enemy so potent he could strike even in the heart of the Hindu Desh. An enemy so dangerous he was omnipresent, yet invisible. An enemy where there was none; for criminals are an organic part of society. A cancerous tumor is not your enemy, but you don’t keep it in your body longer than necessary.

What happened in the next few months is not something Gujaratis should ever be proud of.

Modi has moved on. Gujarat has moved on. Except for the feeling of dreaded karma catching up in the future, there is not much left of those months when humanity deserted the land of many of its greatest sons. Even vigilantes keeping an eye on Modi have found nothing to fault him with. Vigilance is the price of freedom.

I think it is time we expect both sides of this conflict to forgive. Not forget; because if they forget, then history will repeat itself.

In the meanwhile, we all have a future to make.

Usually, I receive mails I could do without from my Orkut contacts. But I found this one anecdote interesting. A school friend, Nikhil Sukhthankar, sent it to me.

Hello friends!! Well, Jayant , my friend, told me the following incident which I wish to share with you. It has had a deep impact on my thinking.

In the Diwali vacation, Jayant and his couple of friends had gone to Delhi.

They rented a taxi for local sight-seeing. The driver was an old Sardar, and boys being boys, Jayant and his pals began cracking Sardarji jokes, just to insinuate the old man.

But to their surprise, the fellow remained unperturbed.

At the end of the sight-seeing, they paid up the hire-charges. The Sardar returned the change. Moreover, he gave each one of them one rupee extra and said, (in Hindi, of course),

”Son, since morning you have been telling Sardarji jokes. I listened to them all and let me tell you, some of them were in a very bad taste. Still, I don’t mind coz I know that you are young blood and are yet to see the world. But I have just one request. Here I am giving you one rupee each. Give it to the first Sardar beggar that you come across in this city.”

Jayant continued,” That one rupee coin is still with me. I couldn’t find a single Sardar begging on the streets of Delhi.”

That’s something to think about. The anecdote finished off with the following paragraph.

Friends, we all love Sardar jokes. But the fact of matter is that Sikhs are one of the most prosperous and diversified communities in the world. The secret behind their universal success, according to me, is their willingness to do any job with utmost dedication. A Sardar will drive a truck or set up a roadside garage or a dhaba, but he will never beg on the streets.

If only we all were Sardars.

The recent violent demands of the Gujjar community in Rajasthan have put the current system of affirmative action in India under spotlight. For perhaps the first time in our history (correct me if I’m wrong), a community is agitating to move down the social ladder. The official, bureaucratic social ladder. After close on to a hundred and more years of social reform; and half a century of affirmative action, it has all come down to this - those classified lower castes are getting the bigger pie of government jobs, so we want to move into the same bracket.

Predictably, once the shock wore off, the Meenas entered the arena looking for pitched battles. “Government jobs” are more precious than manna from heaven. Damned if we let our share get reduced.

And even the resulting parleys involved subtle hints of casteism. The Chief Minister’s daughter-in-law belonged to the agitating community and was called post haste to beef up negotiation’s success rate.

I don’t think we need any more proof that reservations have gone wrong. Caste-based reservations - with quotas determined by out-dated census data and suspect delineation of creamy and non-creamy layers - have worsened the situation. Social prejudice, if one goes by the recent spate of attacks on Dalits, has not abated. Those once abused, are still abused. If anything, reservations have given the oppressors one more beating stick. If a community is desperate enough to move down the social hierarchy to get a better shot at employment - that says a lot about how much they care about their current caste status. They just want jobs, damn it!

What we need is affirmative action based on economic status. Limited to one generation only. And with lots of checks built in, so we won’t have idiots marrying beggars just to get into the sugar bag. That will require sweeping upgrades to the way we do our census. Plus how we manage all that data, given that we will have to check stuff going back to a couple of generations.

Another thing to be done is, we need to drill it into those fools’ heads that affirmative action is not a right, its a consideration given to them. Yes, they deserve that consideration for past wrongs and what-nots, but thats the limit of it. So if our resources are straining at the limit, guess what expense should be the first to go?

Lastly, politicians - go get yourselves a grave or a pyre. We don’t need you.