The noisy debates at primetime on Television in the night have become hot beds of hate. Actually they simply reflect what we have become. Although they are largely staged and bear little or no semblance to the truth and reality in our post-truth era, they do echo an unbecoming hash truth about us. They seem to image us. The fall from grace of Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal is not accidental. It was waiting to happen for sometime. Once it happened than we see how media as well our Government ran for cover blaming it all on what is termed as the fringe. It does matter if today’s fringe was yesterday’s official spokespersons of the ruling party. Suddenly, the value of the religion of the minority other changed. The minority other who was valuable to stroke or mobilize and massify a crowd that we have proudly come to understand as a form of a nationalism suddenly become worthy of respect in our declaration to Governments in the middle East.
How did we reach to this point of blindness and deafness? Did the loud decimals of hate exchanges on our television damaged our ear drums? Or have we come to enjoy an intoxication of power? Our eyes can see yet refuse to see how our democracy is dying into a Bulldozercracy. Such Bulldozercracy has no rule of law. We just bullodoze people as enemies of our society or rather our state simply based on beliefs. It is this serious. Persons who are believed to be the masterminds of riots and violence are punished with the bulldozer running over their houses. Justice appears therefore to be far cry as we bulldoze our way to what we cherish as a Hindu Rashtriya. Perhaps, we have not calculated the human price of such a politics. We as a nation is on the boil for quite some time. Our restlessness is thought to be at the service our nation. Unfortunately, we seem to be seeing the figure of the nation to come in the state that is ruling us today.
We seem to be worshiping the state. It has come to something of the shadow of God for us.Hence, we have been worshiping political leader too. Greetings that were once reserved for a divinity are now invoked upon our PM. The invocation, ‘ Her Her Modi ‘ seem to come natural to some among us. We have found our idol and it’s high priest. We seem to have submitted to statism. Our statism is fired by the ideology of Hindudtva. Hence, it is important to ask why we have come to this stage? There may be several reasons that has led us to this point. I have no intention to simplify it’s complexity but wish to humbly do a soul searching.
One of the chief reasons among others is our newly found digital addiction. We are indeed living in a digital data forest. It has made us feel that everything is moving fast and we are almost everyday overwhelmed with a feeling that we are going to miss something. We are made to feel that we have to do a lot of catching up. The smartphone has made us idiots just trying to multiply our digital as well social life lest we miss something precious. If the rumours are right about a new exodus of Congress MLAs into BJP, than, they also are haunted by a sense of a missed opportunity. Everyone is pushed by the fear of missing something. This is why in a hurry we may utter words in the heat of moment that we may regret later.
The smartphone has ressurected the mob in us. We do not have to leave the comforts of our homes but can assemble as a mob on several digital platforms simultaneously. The self as an individual is dead. What we have is a mob- enabled-self. The hunger not to miss something seem to have converted us into a monstous crowd in the web. We seem to have acquired a mob pride. Mobes in the web then have several shapes. They become our echo chambers where we enjoy the intoxication of hearing our own voice. This feeds into a feeling of being self-righteous and we often do not want to miss the opportunity to name and shame people who are deemed as infidels of our society. Maybe this is why we regularly humiliate, shame and blame others who affect our aesthetic sensibilities. This enslavement to our aesthetic orientations has blurred the boundaries between good and evil, truth and falsity. We have to overcome the sense of being left behind by the past, the present and the future to come. Otherwise our society is doomed to run into a hell of time.
