Why we are fixated with reverential prefixes : The Tribune India

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MUSINGS & MALEDICTIONS

Why we are fixated with reverential prefixes

Am quite worried that the political parties and media — especially the wise heads that sit on television panels, spouting profundities — are all barking up the wrong tree.

Why we are fixated with reverential prefixes

Swami Chinmayanand



Keki Daruwalla

Am quite worried that the political parties and media — especially the wise  heads that sit on television panels, spouting profundities — are all  barking up the wrong tree. They are busy with the  economy, some savant even belatedly attacked the GST, others talk about the revision of fines under the Motor Vehicles Act. They are ignoring  the baffling and almost insurmountable problem staring them right in the face.

There needs to be a conclave to settle the issue, and it must consist of political bigwigs, with some retired judges thrown in along with a few  pseudo intellectuals and secularists (also pseudo, never forget) and discuss a major problem confronting the nation. How  long can a Swami be called a Swami after he has allegedly raped a law student, or anyone for that matter? Here are religion and reverence and age-old  feet-touching rituals entangled with forensics. Here are ochre robe and rudraksh beads, wooden footwear called khadaaus, and hand spread out to bless till shoulder gets weary, pitched against that beef-eating Macaulay-crafted Indian Penal Code. Who is to win, I wanna know. Can ochre or saffron ever succumb to a musty room with people in black jackets strutting before his Lordship, also attired and adorned in a black jacket? Is this is a sartorial affray, an Armageddon of fashion contests? And when exactly will our respected ‘Bench’ get clad in some lotus-coloured or saffron-hued kurta and similarly hued pyjama or dhoti?

The next point on the agenda needs to be: do we need another section to tackle ongoing sexual offences, the ones that go on from month to month, smeared with longevity and a dash of faux eternity? Get hold of a video, blackmail the lady and the rapist gets a tenure  post, as the Americans would call it. There must be another law to check that kind of stuff.

For Asaram Bapu and Ram Rahim and others of that ilk, we shouldn’t  put an embargo on the prefix. Our devotees, known as bhakts in  central India and bhagats in Punjab, would rather die than cut the swami bit out. If you get settled in the heart of a devotee, which court order can evict you? None, Brutus, none. So we need to submit to the General Will (Rousseau, we can’t let go of you) and  agree that the sobriquet ‘swami’ or ‘baba’ can almost be equated with a hereditary title. We scribes can only endorse this obeisance from criminal justice and civil society.

A  graver forensic matter crops up, which has been missed out by the Chief  Minister. In the MeToo era, what must be the gap between rape and the lodging of the FIR, the First Information Report? Can there be a chasm between the two? What does the law say? This  conclave, suggested earlier, must decide that. When do the investigating officers and their supervisors get medals for delaying the FIRs against  sexual offenders? Arresting such a guy is a hazardous  job. Some devotee may immolate himself. Why can’t the UP Police show  the alacrity so flamboyantly displayed by the CBI and the ED as they leapt and  leap-frogged over fence and gate to arrest an ex-Finance Minister? Or  how does the UP Police compare with even Jammu and Kashmir where they have an entire state, sorry Union Territory, under arrest and curfew, and have arrested a respected pro-India  ex-Chief Minister?

The matter has been finalised now. The alleged offender has been arrested and sent to jail. I noticed though that the Director General, even while talking about the accused and his arrest, kept  referring to him as ‘Swamiji’, reverential to the last. He will earn good marks from the party in power.

Uniting India?

The  reverend Home Minister Amit Shah made his second move on the political  chessboard to unite India. The first move, of course, was more  earth-shaking as he reduced a state to sundry Union Territories, and removed the thorn that was troubling Indo-Pakistan relations. If you remember your chess, it was the knight jumping over barricades, and aided by the Governor’s bishop and General Rawat’s rook, checkmating the  Kashmiri king.

The Home Minister, fresh from his triumph, has now saddled the nation with  the task of unification through Hindi. A bit talismanic, if I may venture to suggest. The questions that crop up are, do we consider ourselves disunited or divided? Probably the BJP thinks  so. China is a political grail for many of us, one language, one race  and one objective — to subdue the others. But who do we wish to subdue, who are we going to get united against? Aren’t  we a family at the moment? Or are we at loggerheads with each other? A ‘disunited’ India gave a thumping mandate to the BJP, much more than a ‘Hindiised’ India could. What more does the RSS want?

But  let’s end with the good news. Ravish Kumar won the coveted Magsaysay Award for his bold and fair journalism, though the media did not give him the coverage he so richly deserved.

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