Times of India - 2/3/09
What would be your pick for a proud, heart warming moment in these gloomy days of meltdown and violence — A R Rahman’s one in a million ‘Jai Ho’ score grabbing the Oscars or the Pathan brothers’ heartstopping heroics to pull off an implausible victory for the Indian cricket team?
Refusing to get mired in hatred, Rahman chose the path of love and went on to win the biggest cinema award in the world. Forget the spontaneous euphoria after the awards ceremony, slumdogs have seldom injected so much joy into a movie crazy nation that had rarely looked beyond Bollywood melodramas.
Just a fortnight before the tune created by the Mozart from Madras became a ballad for many Indians who will hum it for a long time, the Pathan brothers — Irfan and Yusuf — got together in Colombo in the dying stages of a T20 match when the dice was heavily loaded against India. They unleashed scintillating shots to help India claw back from the jaws of defeat to stand head high on the victory podium.
So what is your pick? Rahman or Pathan brothers? No doubt, they are the real heroes. For, they brought smiles and tears of joy in the eyes of millions — Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs. True, none of us thought about the religion professed by Rahman and the Pathan brothers. Who cares, they made us all — we Indians — proud.
So, are we secular and tolerant because things went as per our wishes? Then, why do we hinge our thinking to religion and indulge in finger pointing when things go wrong? Why do we become intolerant bigots whenever dark clouds shadow humanity? But, are commoners as much to blame for such a shifting mindset as political leaders?
On this issue — the polity’s convenient shuffling between secularism and fanaticism — the Supreme Court had in 1994 come out with some powerful comments, even if we choose not to focus on its main ruling on acquisition of disputed land after the unfortunate demolition of Babri masjid in 1992. [Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India 1994 SCC (6) 360]. The voluminous judgment by a 5-judge constitution Bench started with a lovely prophetic quote from 17th century Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, more popular for his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. He said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Swami Vivekanand, again quoted by the SC in Faruqui judgment, had said, “Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation; it is being and becoming, it is realisation.” We Indians more or less have realised it, will the polity follow suit?
What would be your pick for a proud, heart warming moment in these gloomy days of meltdown and violence — A R Rahman’s one in a million ‘Jai Ho’ score grabbing the Oscars or the Pathan brothers’ heartstopping heroics to pull off an implausible victory for the Indian cricket team?
Refusing to get mired in hatred, Rahman chose the path of love and went on to win the biggest cinema award in the world. Forget the spontaneous euphoria after the awards ceremony, slumdogs have seldom injected so much joy into a movie crazy nation that had rarely looked beyond Bollywood melodramas.
Just a fortnight before the tune created by the Mozart from Madras became a ballad for many Indians who will hum it for a long time, the Pathan brothers — Irfan and Yusuf — got together in Colombo in the dying stages of a T20 match when the dice was heavily loaded against India. They unleashed scintillating shots to help India claw back from the jaws of defeat to stand head high on the victory podium.
So what is your pick? Rahman or Pathan brothers? No doubt, they are the real heroes. For, they brought smiles and tears of joy in the eyes of millions — Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs. True, none of us thought about the religion professed by Rahman and the Pathan brothers. Who cares, they made us all — we Indians — proud.
So, are we secular and tolerant because things went as per our wishes? Then, why do we hinge our thinking to religion and indulge in finger pointing when things go wrong? Why do we become intolerant bigots whenever dark clouds shadow humanity? But, are commoners as much to blame for such a shifting mindset as political leaders?
On this issue — the polity’s convenient shuffling between secularism and fanaticism — the Supreme Court had in 1994 come out with some powerful comments, even if we choose not to focus on its main ruling on acquisition of disputed land after the unfortunate demolition of Babri masjid in 1992. [Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India 1994 SCC (6) 360]. The voluminous judgment by a 5-judge constitution Bench started with a lovely prophetic quote from 17th century Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, more popular for his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. He said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Swami Vivekanand, again quoted by the SC in Faruqui judgment, had said, “Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation; it is being and becoming, it is realisation.” We Indians more or less have realised it, will the polity follow suit?
No comments:
Post a Comment