We live in turbulent times. The threat of disaster permeates everything. If it’s not the onslaught of a nuclear winter that threatens to erupt every time two countries are at a standoff, it’s the risk of a single sneeze infecting a whole continent with a serious plague. Right now, we’re like people climbing a mountain during a huge thunderstorm. But thanks to the wisdom of the people of this country, we’ve ended up electing some excellent sherpas to lead us to the nearest summit.
One of these sherpas is none other than the Union Minister of Home and the dad from every Rajshri Productions movie, Rajnath Singh. He’s been a target of a lot of controversies, which is perhaps to be expected. The Lutyens Delhi liberal mafia doesn’t really like him. Unlike them, he’s not some troglodyte elitist from a posh Ivy League school. He’s not a Nobel-prize winning economist who has written a white paper about the impact of inflation-indexed bonds on the unskilled labour market. He hasn’t spent his life being a tool of western imperialism by working his way to the top echelons of an intergovernmental organisation.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Rajnath Singh is a simple man who believes in four things: god, country, sangh and party. These are the pillars his life revolves around. Unlike most denizens of the fledgling Delhi durbar, he’s not after power. He is happy to serve the country in whatever capacity its people deem fit. Yet left-libbers deem him worthy of attack: just because he doesn’t attend their ostentatious lit-fests, and refuses to use his government provided accommodation to host elaborate dinner parties. Every time they have decided that his career is dead, he bounces back with panache. In spite of that, they continue to go after him.
Just a few days ago, they took a speech he gave at a school in Jodhpur, quoted what he said out-of-context, and made him sound parochial, xenophobic, short-sighted, offensive, wrong, historically inaccurate and frankly, quite racist. Therefore, as a fellow patriot, I cannot in good conscience stand on the sidelines and watch these cocktail communists metaphorically devour this man like the unrepentant vultures they are.
In his speech, the point the minister was trying to make is simple: colonialism is the worst. That’s a sentiment we can all get behind, right? In the modern world, we frown upon treating people as second- or third-class citizens in their own home. No matter how many books Niall Ferguson writes about the supposed glory of the empire, there is no bravery in decimating the local population’s indigenous industry and stealing all their natural resources while forcing them to buy your overpriced junk. In the 21st century, everyone is considered equal! Unless of course they’re gay or eat non-vegetarian food or live in the North-East or like to wear skinny jeans. Then they’re pretty much asking for it. They might as well walk around wearing “discriminate against me now, ask me how!” placards on their backs.
Ebb and Flow
Not only did colonialism leave us with a legacy of division, it also made us lose our sense of self. They accomplished this terrible goal by decimating our age-old education system, replacing it with an inferior version of theirs. You see, formal education was another awesome thing that was invented in our country, even if at that time this blessed land was divided into a rag-tag bunch of ephemeral nation-states. It is widely known that the most important intellectual conversations of those times were taking place in universities that existed in the primordial precursor to the geographical entity that we now refer to as India.
Before that, children were educated using the gurukul model. Basically, every man who claimed to be "enlightened" could set up one of these in his own backyard. Since no one paid any fees, the students worked off their debt by performing various tasks around the teachers’ house. It was a great system! The teachers got free labour and students got an education! Since India has a rich tradition of respecting teachers, no parents ever questioned the quality of the education being imparted to their ward. Not that the teachers had any incentive to listen to them. What were the parents going to do in case they weren’t satisfied? Stop paying the fees? Leave a bad Yelp review? The gurukul system paved the way for current institutions of higher learning, like IIPM.
Everything was going well! Then, out of nowhere, the damn British walked into the country with their standardised education and fancy words for going to the loo and charmed our students into abandoning this time-honoured system of learning. Even the so-called leaders of our freedom movement could not resist this seduction. While they were advocating the use of only indigenous goods and services, they became more British than the actual people living in England. If the leaders of our freedom movement hadn’t existed, they’d have to be invented by PG Wodehouse.
This drove the people of this venerable land away from the one thing that has made our country different from everybody else in the world: our culture. You see, as a rule of thumb, ancient things are always the best. If it was good enough for a group of primitive people who made up superstitions to explain normal scientific phenomenon, then it’s good enough for us!
Another Prick in the Wall
I, for one, think that Rajnath Singh is right. If it wasn’t for our culture, we might as well have been some nondescript country like Ecuador or Canada. Canada! Canada is the Hamid Ansari of countries: always needing to remind everyone of its presence. We should be teaching our kids to be proud of our culture. From the zero, to marrying someone you’ve met only once, to Deepak Chopra, we’ve invented everything! If it weren’t for us, people the world over would only be having sex in the missionary position. How boring would that have been? What tools would people have used to spice up their relationships? The Kamasutra has saved more marriages from self-destructing than the fear of social ostracism. Who else but fair minded people like our ancestors could have come up with something as unique as sixty-nining? (By the way, ladies, you’re welcome!)
Another misguided export that we revere in this country is democracy. Why couldn’t we let our Prime Ministers be decided the old fashioned way: through the use of astrology? Now Rajnath Singh is not advocating this policy for personal gain. He doesn’t want to be Prime Minister, despite what his astrologer keeps telling him. He’s a loyal party worker. He will do whatever job the party assigns him. If one day in the very distant future they want him to be the country’s primary sevak, who is he to stop them? Respecting the wishes of your elders, isn’t that what Indian culture is all about?
Unless of course, the elder person in question is LK Advani. In that case you just ignore whatever they have to say and do your own thing.
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One of these sherpas is none other than the Union Minister of Home and the dad from every Rajshri Productions movie, Rajnath Singh. He’s been a target of a lot of controversies, which is perhaps to be expected. The Lutyens Delhi liberal mafia doesn’t really like him. Unlike them, he’s not some troglodyte elitist from a posh Ivy League school. He’s not a Nobel-prize winning economist who has written a white paper about the impact of inflation-indexed bonds on the unskilled labour market. He hasn’t spent his life being a tool of western imperialism by working his way to the top echelons of an intergovernmental organisation.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Rajnath Singh is a simple man who believes in four things: god, country, sangh and party. These are the pillars his life revolves around. Unlike most denizens of the fledgling Delhi durbar, he’s not after power. He is happy to serve the country in whatever capacity its people deem fit. Yet left-libbers deem him worthy of attack: just because he doesn’t attend their ostentatious lit-fests, and refuses to use his government provided accommodation to host elaborate dinner parties. Every time they have decided that his career is dead, he bounces back with panache. In spite of that, they continue to go after him.
Just a few days ago, they took a speech he gave at a school in Jodhpur, quoted what he said out-of-context, and made him sound parochial, xenophobic, short-sighted, offensive, wrong, historically inaccurate and frankly, quite racist. Therefore, as a fellow patriot, I cannot in good conscience stand on the sidelines and watch these cocktail communists metaphorically devour this man like the unrepentant vultures they are.
In his speech, the point the minister was trying to make is simple: colonialism is the worst. That’s a sentiment we can all get behind, right? In the modern world, we frown upon treating people as second- or third-class citizens in their own home. No matter how many books Niall Ferguson writes about the supposed glory of the empire, there is no bravery in decimating the local population’s indigenous industry and stealing all their natural resources while forcing them to buy your overpriced junk. In the 21st century, everyone is considered equal! Unless of course they’re gay or eat non-vegetarian food or live in the North-East or like to wear skinny jeans. Then they’re pretty much asking for it. They might as well walk around wearing “discriminate against me now, ask me how!” placards on their backs.
Ebb and Flow
Not only did colonialism leave us with a legacy of division, it also made us lose our sense of self. They accomplished this terrible goal by decimating our age-old education system, replacing it with an inferior version of theirs. You see, formal education was another awesome thing that was invented in our country, even if at that time this blessed land was divided into a rag-tag bunch of ephemeral nation-states. It is widely known that the most important intellectual conversations of those times were taking place in universities that existed in the primordial precursor to the geographical entity that we now refer to as India.
Before that, children were educated using the gurukul model. Basically, every man who claimed to be "enlightened" could set up one of these in his own backyard. Since no one paid any fees, the students worked off their debt by performing various tasks around the teachers’ house. It was a great system! The teachers got free labour and students got an education! Since India has a rich tradition of respecting teachers, no parents ever questioned the quality of the education being imparted to their ward. Not that the teachers had any incentive to listen to them. What were the parents going to do in case they weren’t satisfied? Stop paying the fees? Leave a bad Yelp review? The gurukul system paved the way for current institutions of higher learning, like IIPM.
Everything was going well! Then, out of nowhere, the damn British walked into the country with their standardised education and fancy words for going to the loo and charmed our students into abandoning this time-honoured system of learning. Even the so-called leaders of our freedom movement could not resist this seduction. While they were advocating the use of only indigenous goods and services, they became more British than the actual people living in England. If the leaders of our freedom movement hadn’t existed, they’d have to be invented by PG Wodehouse.
This drove the people of this venerable land away from the one thing that has made our country different from everybody else in the world: our culture. You see, as a rule of thumb, ancient things are always the best. If it was good enough for a group of primitive people who made up superstitions to explain normal scientific phenomenon, then it’s good enough for us!
Another Prick in the Wall
I, for one, think that Rajnath Singh is right. If it wasn’t for our culture, we might as well have been some nondescript country like Ecuador or Canada. Canada! Canada is the Hamid Ansari of countries: always needing to remind everyone of its presence. We should be teaching our kids to be proud of our culture. From the zero, to marrying someone you’ve met only once, to Deepak Chopra, we’ve invented everything! If it weren’t for us, people the world over would only be having sex in the missionary position. How boring would that have been? What tools would people have used to spice up their relationships? The Kamasutra has saved more marriages from self-destructing than the fear of social ostracism. Who else but fair minded people like our ancestors could have come up with something as unique as sixty-nining? (By the way, ladies, you’re welcome!)
Another misguided export that we revere in this country is democracy. Why couldn’t we let our Prime Ministers be decided the old fashioned way: through the use of astrology? Now Rajnath Singh is not advocating this policy for personal gain. He doesn’t want to be Prime Minister, despite what his astrologer keeps telling him. He’s a loyal party worker. He will do whatever job the party assigns him. If one day in the very distant future they want him to be the country’s primary sevak, who is he to stop them? Respecting the wishes of your elders, isn’t that what Indian culture is all about?
Unless of course, the elder person in question is LK Advani. In that case you just ignore whatever they have to say and do your own thing.