Vivekanand Jha, Ranchi . With the world scorched by the radicalisation of ideological hatred
for each other tearing the societies apart; with the racial
supremacists –be it white, Islamist or Hindu
nationalists–pre-destined to leverage their demographic dividends,
the lofty doctrinaire belief of the world being anything but one big
family, had long receded to the pages of scriptures. Small wonder the
world, as if seized by some bizarre frenzy, is seeking to upend
anything that sought to homogenise the humanity despite the underlying
differences in colour, religions, races and castes, the very ideology
of universal brotherhood that Swami Vivekananda espoused for, appears
anything but obsolete.. Hence in this backdrop, when the entire world
is torn by the racial and religious divides, the panacea for all cure
for humanity would be: to go back to the rediscovering Swami
Vivekananda anew.
The latest incident of the siege of Capitol Hill, by Donald Trump’s
supporters, is the heavy blow to the institutional values reaching the
rock bottom in the world’s longest democracy. Significantly, the turn
of Twenty first century will be chronicled by the historians–both
orientals and occidentals– as the century that sought to unify the
world as never before and, that too, not on some plausible cause but,
albeit, for all the wrong reasons: The world over is swept by some
form of fundamentalism or authoritarianism that ostensibly showcases
the majoritarian agenda masqueraded as the ‘nationalism’ to browbeat
the minorities into a forcible submission. Coincidentally, from
Europe, USA to Asia, a peculiar wave of an emerging nationalism, which
sought the majoritarian domination in the polity, while setting aside
the institutionalised norms of liberalism that hitherto guided the
mankind in its vision to look upon their misfortunate brethren from a
far less privileged nation, as their own brethren in distress who
needed an upliftment. While the white supremacists in USA, sought its
own place under the sun, under the leadership of Donald Trump,
determined to have an upper hand over the blacks, asserted themselves
overwhelmingly in 2016; Hindu majority, suppressed for decades, under
Nehruvian Secularism, persevered to carve out its own space under the
sun, under its own Hindu Hriday Samrat, Narendra Modi. Turkey, a
connecting point between Asia and the Europe, ever happy under the
rule of secularism, surprisingly produced an Islamist, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who, irrespective of Turkey’s long cherished legacy of
secular polity, turned it upside down: Turkey was turned into an
Islamic nation, where the summum bonum has been rdiscovered to be that
of institutionalising the Islamic sectarianism at the cost of
democratic and secuar- liberal values. Worse still, China, which had
lain low during the regimes of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, exhibited
180 degree U Turn, with Xi Jinping taking over as the head of China
for his entire life. This is another form of jingoistic nationalism in
full display where China, throwing all the international norms to the
winds, has unleashed the naked hegemonistic traits that took the
international community off- guard.
Paradoxically, the last quarter of the twentieth century, which sought
to bring the entire world together as a global village, under the
massive wave of globalisation, shall start cringing, rather retrieving
to its shell, was beyond the imagination of the worst of naysayers.
Covid 19, an unprecedented pandemic taught the world that,
globalisation, which was touted as the boon for the mankind for
linking the developing and undeveloped world with that of the
developed world, no sooner when the Covid unleashed its biggest menace
on the mankind, instantly proved as the imprecation: The world, which
never tired to trumpet its connection with USA, sought an immediate
solace in severing its link with the world’s most powerful country,
lest the virus of Covid 19 should not get imported with contacts from
that of Americans. Apparently, the rich and the affluent western
nations, which always donned the role of self- appointed guardians for
delivering sermons to the lesser mortals in the Orientals and African
nations, while they underwent all sorts of nemesis from poverty and
diseases, invariably ended up with eggs at their faces: The healthcare
of USA, the richest country in the world, was caught extremely
deficient amidst the escalating crisis brought about by the Pandemic.
Ostensibly, even the USA was left wondering about the solution to the
humongous problem that afflicted it from all sides. While the world
targeted China, for exporting the deadly virus–the source of origin
was Wuhan–the former laughed off the criticisms, throwing a challenge
to its detractors and critics for overcoming the crisis.
Interestingly, China, despite being the nerve centre of the crisis,
overcame it no time while the entire world was left to fend for
itself. Worse still, while the world was still reeling under the worst
crisis that engulfed the mankind, China, ever surreptitiously nursing
a desire to eclipse the USA as the world power, began wielding its
influence through its militaristic exhibition—the standoff at Ladakh
with India, confrontation with Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam and
Japan–at the same time, demonstrates Chinese’ confidence to replace
USA as a power of Asia
Nepal, a brotherly neighbour of India, co-existing with it, since time
immemorial, found itself increasingly alienated from India. with an
expanding influence of another Himalayan neighbour, China. The latter,
ever intoxicated by its overwhelming ambition to rule over Asia, had
begun cultivating the neighbours with a view to peddle influence. No
wonder the Belt and Road Initiative was a ruse to infiltrate these
countries, by promising them the infrastructure upliftment leading to
the rise in employment in the countries such an infrastructure
development was undertaken. No wonder Pakistan has already been
reduced to the buffer state, and the efforts are on to pulverise
Nepal too on the similar lines. Little wonder the Prime Minister
K.P.Oli, who, till very recently, was doing the bidding for China, by
handing over its own territory to China, learnt a bitter lesson when
China, under extreme pressure from other communist leaders, Prachanda
and Madhav Nepal, had reconciled to sacrifice Oli for keeping the
Communist party united. Oli, egged by Jinping, had also aggravated his
country’s dispute with India when he claimed a part of Indian
territory of Uttarakhand by re- drawing the Nepal’s boundary. In other
words, the world today stands bedevilled by problems from all sides.
.K.P.Oli’s latest decision to plunge the whole country into an
impending crisis by dissolving the Parliament, is another low when the
rulers, in intoxication of power, overrides the national interest by
superimposing his own whims and fancy.
Significantly, 8th of January, 2021 will go down in history as the
blackest day of democracy. The President of America, Donald Trump, a
man of unhinged mind, sought to overturn the verdict of the people by
superimposing his own wish upon the will of the people of America. No
wonder the US Constitution was overruled at the altar of the
individual whims and fancy of a power maniac who, in hs obsession for
power, had sought to paralyse the constitution as never before. In an
unprecedented action, as no Prsident ever contemplated, far less
actionalised, the diabolical dsecration of American Parliament,
Capitol Hill, by instigating his hordes of supporters to take siege of
the temple of the Ameerican democracy, especially during such times
when the session was going on in the Senate and the Senators were
holding discussions to hand over the winning certificates to the
President elect and vice- President: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That
Donald Trump did not ask his supporters to return from Capitol Hill,
despite there being a bloodshed –whereas four people had died,
including a woman, scores were injured in a violent clash with the
police. In the wake of such an unprcedented trauma, witnessed by the
people from across the world, the Facebook and Instagram immediately
banned Trump from writing any further posts to incite further
violence. Was it the same America that had hoasted the world
Parliament of religions way back in 1893 when an oriental monk had
mesmerised the whole world with his immortal speech on the entire
world being an extended family? Is it the same America, where its 16th
Prsident, Abraham Lincoln, had set a glorious precedent by setting an
example of unifying the nation which stood divided on the ground of
racial disparities? Is it the same America, where the Martin Luther
King 2 had delivered his wonderful speech seking the unity of all race
and religions on earth through his vision for an equality for all in
America? Unquivocally, Donald Trump has sullied the face of USA as
none ever did; it hardly resembes the America where more than a
quarter and a century, a monk from India, had traversed beyond the
seven seas to deliver his unversal message that sought to unify the
humanity wherever on the earth they stayed.
In fact, not only USA, it is India too, which completely defies the
vision of Swami Vivekananda. In the ‘new India’ where a new phrase
Hindu nationalism has come to be a dominating community. A new India,
whose destiny is presided over by a Hindu nationalist, envisages the
supremacy of the majority community where hating ‘Muslims’ has become
the institutionalised norms. Hindu nationalism preaches the supremacy
of Hindus where Muslims are equal partners, yet such equality has to
come by way of the magnanimous sanction from the majority community.
In this new India, Gandhian vision of ‘secularism’ is an abuse, wheras
the vision of the Hindu exclusivism is the new social order. A ‘new
India’, of this twenty first century, dubs the slightest criticisms
directed against the Modi governemnt or the Prime Minister, as acts of
sedition. No wonder the Muslims, thronging at Shaheen Bagh, protesting
against the CAA, or the farmers protesting for their legitimate
demands, at Delhi borders, for more than a month, were outright dubbed
as the traitors. Incidentally, the Mother India, had long receded to
the background, as the father of India—Narendra Modi was dubbed as
such by his friend Donald Trump–has taken to the central stage. The
slogans such as ‘Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’, has already sought to
elevate the Prime Minister as the demi- god of the republic. In this
mad frenzy of deification of an individual, the institutional erosion
has almost reached its zenith: The subordiantion of judiciary to the
executive has almost reached its nadir. This new India strivs to
equate cheerleading an individual as acts of patriotism. Whereas the
national icons had already been relegated to the backburner by the
previous regimes of dynasty, yet the nation has never witnessed such a
national frenzy surrounding an individual.
Today, rather as paying glowing tributes to the national hero who had
brought the genuine glory and honour to a heathen nation, a nation
that was suffering the stigma and taint of being colonised and invaded
for millennium. During such times when Indians had begun looking upon
their own culture and civiisationa history with disdain; when Indians,
exposed to Macaulay’s brand of English education, had begun to
increasingly admire everything having the premateur of Europe, a monk
in the ochre robe, had sought to teach the civilised Amricans that,
notwithstnading thir purported advanced living, it was India that was
their forefathers in showing them the resplendent path towards the
Creator and His Creation. The glory of Bhagvad Gita and the depth of
Upanishadic truths, he taught to the Americans. ‘Peace and Non-
violence’, the eternal mantra of co-existence of civilisation, had
sustained the humanity through ages. No wonder Professor Wright of
Harvard, from whom the great Swami sought his credential to
participate in the World Parliament of Religions, had famously said, ‘
To ask you Swamy for your credentials, is like asking the sun about
its right to shine’. Therefore, it is the hgh time that Swami
Vivekananda’s glorious vision of ‘Vedantist mind with Islamic body’
shall constitute India, shall eventuallybe taken as the summum bonum
of our country. A new India, which has digressed from Swami
Vivekanada’s vision, is to be brought back to his glorious vision,
where Hindus and Muslims should stay like two brothers of the same
Mother India. The pride of Mother India shoud be restored, and an
individua, however powerful, should not be substituted for Mother
India. An individual, even a Prime Minister, shuld be considered as a
sentry to Mother India. Hence, this new India, has to metamorphose
into India that Swami Vivekananda had dremed eternally. In fact, we
very much deviated from it; the wide gulf which has come to exist
between Hindus and Muslims, must be bridged at a war footing. Hence,
today, we all take the pledge that we have to redicover the vision of
Swami Vivekananda for India in particuar and the world in general, for
in the rediscovery of his vision, lies the the welfare of the
humanity.
