Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Indian politics: From blaming 'foreign hand' for troubles to 'inventing' enemies to for polarization, inflaming passions



Till 1980s, national politics was about blaming 'external hand' for any disaster, failure and to divert attention.

It was so common that at the slightest opportunity, leaders would either blame an outside agency for the troubles or it was believed that certain leaders were working at the instance of the 'foreign forces'. 

But now it's a totally different scenario in India. Our own people are branded, enemies are 'invented' within the country in order to inflame passions and for polarization.


Entire groups-communities are defamed, targeted and hate fuelled through IT cells, media & propaganda. 

The strategy now is to term a group 'anti-national' & hound it through TV and social media. It becomes a 'tamasha' and weeks, even months pass as channels and newspapers enter the fray, forcing people to discuss, while forgetting all other pressing issues. 

Effort is made to pit own people against each other, at least that way focus is away from failure on development, other issues. There is always more passion when there is hate & rivalry among groups. TV is playing a major role in this sinister campaign. 

New terms are coined, dissenters can be branded, one is Urban N, other is Tukde Tukde Gang or Love Jihad, et al. And above all this Hindu-Muslim issue. Anything from what one eats, what one sells or cooks, from Vande Matram to Cow, Madarsa, Jinnah, Burqa, Marriages, name a word, even one of them can be used to spread hate through 9 pm debates, FB pages that are for this reason & it just never stops.

It's not that people don't know. You have to live together, hundreds of millions of each community, no one is going anywhere. You know, this hate is manufactured, it serves a purpose but still people continue to fall for this. Distrust and hate keeps going up, people do not even get tired! 

Now it has hit the level of creating enemies from within, own people termed outsiders, students and activists branded, sometime it is religion, then regional from M'shtra Vs Bihar or anything that just pits one group against other, keeps minds occupied, grab eyeballs, inflames passion.