Thinking through a siege

Nothing like a bunch of terrorists to send our chattering classes scurrying for their armchairs and dispensing forth, a broad spectrum of political antibiotics. Which is all very well - our constitutional duty as enlightened citizens and so on and so forth…except that many, if not a majority, of the proposed solutions are really no more useful than the kneejerk reactions of our mantries and netas…

A forwarded mail I received yesterday – from a senior corporate honcho, no less – was one such gem, suggesting that the army take over the country, besides throwing in some subtle insinuations of a communal character (an MNC forum calls for a certain degree of sanitization – his views would probably stink a whole lot more in the living room). And then, my housing society suddenly decides that taxis can’t enter the compound – outraged glares met me when I wanted to know how this would solve the problem.

I hate to sound to sound like a fatalist, and I suppose such wisdom comes cheap when one is not personally affected, but we have opted for a way of life, and are confronted by a uniquely restrictive set of (insert any combination of the social sciences here) circumstances, that makes us particularly vulnerable.

Solutions are available for sure…and these range from “merely” invoking draconian laws to full scale military arrangements. But while a general direction away from liberty is probably inescapable, every-time we get excited about throwing out our politicians or replicating the Chinese/Singaporean model, let us pause and consider the oceans of tinpots and bananas that surround these islands of excellence, if indeed they deserve to be glorified as such…

And while ranting against the emptiness of clichés like “Mumbai’s spirit is intact” and the like, let us also concede: Dammit! It’s true!! We’ve done rather well for a country that has absolutely no parallels in terms of size, diversity or, despite our recent economic success, absolute magnitude of poverty. Here we are, 60 + years after Winston Churchill infamously wrote us off – still whole, still largely true to the spirit of our founding fathers and yeah, still unbroken in spirit – if that’s a cliché, it is one worth repeating a million times.

This is not the first terror attack in the country and, sadly, it is unlikely be the last. Which is not to suggest that things cannot be improved – they can and they should. But in a considered, objective and unimpassioned manner. And when we evaluate our options going forward, we certainly ought to think about where we’ve gone wrong.

But, perhaps, also about what we’ve got right.

Bharat Ratna for Pandit Bhimsen Joshi

Salutations to the Maestro! An honour for the The Bharat Ratna award.