Respected Bapuji,
Jai ShriKrishna. And wish you a very happy
birthday.
I hope this
letter finds you in best of the spirits and health. And when I say spirit, I do
not mean the beverage (which is believed to be the only spirit in this nation),
which you always denounced. Bapu, You
would be glad to learn that I have never ever tried wine, whisky or beer,
because like you, I too have believed all through my life that liquor has an
evil affect not only our health but also on our souls. Though, I must admit bapu,
that there is hardly any space left for soul or conscience in our country and
those with a weaker or dead conscience are doing better than those whose
conscience is too hefty, bulky and live.
You would be
happy to learn that a good number of items used by you are still in vogue in
this country. For instance, the lathi that you used to carry comes very handy
when dealing with the people sitting on dharna and engaging themselves in
pradarshan, i.e. demonstrations. Lathi-charge is akin to law and
order in India and it has become so popular that the Oxford Dictionary has
started recognizing it as an English term. Our police force wields lathi to
ward off the masses carrying out demonstrations at public places. In fact both,
the common man and the police are following you in true spirit. While the
common man is taking out mass demonstrations and satyagrah as taught by you
during the struggle for freedom, the lathi used by you as a walking stick, has
very aptly been adopted by the police for thrashing the masses carrying out
such demonstrations. This way, the country has ensured that you are followed,
in either way.
You would
recollect your collection of three monkeys who symbolized your three principles,
viz.- not to utter foul words, not to see an evil and not to listen to an evil.
Almost all the Indians behave the same way. They turn a blind eye if something
wrong is happening in right in front of them, and if somebody tries to say
something about someone’s wrongful deeds, they just don’t pay heed and go deaf.
If, however, by mistake, they get to see or listen of anything going wrong,
they just fall dumb and don’t utter a word about it. This is how the common man
has adopted and followed your teachings. You must be too glad to learn it,
Bapu. Isn’t it?
It is however,
unfortunate that liquor has become a big source of revenue for the governments
in this country and we get to see a wine shop at every hundred meters. Potable
water and milk are still a distant dream to a common citizen, but liquor is
available in abundance. Gujarat, where you were born, is a dry state,
officially. The neighboring UT of Lakshdweep and the states of Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are the net gainers, who attract a good number
of boozers from Gujarat, on all week-ends. This has boosted not only the sale
of booze, but also tourism in these neighboring states.
Bapu, its good
that you are not alive to see the way our public leaders carry themselves. They
lead a life of splendor and luxury. While about forty percent of the Indian
population still starves below the poverty line, our planning commission
affords more than three and half million of Rupees in carrying out repairs in
its toilet. You would be wondering that the country has suddenly become very
conscious about its toilets. No-no Bapu, you are mistaken. If you remember, in
your first exposure with the Congress, during its Kolkata session, you had
taken up to cleaning the dirty toilets, soiled by the veteran congress leaders.
Most of the urban India still defecates the same way. Every place is a toilet
in our urban areas and people can be found pissing every here and there. And
more than half of our population still relieves itself in the open. In UP alone
there are more than three lakh dry latrines, cleaned daily by scavangers and
pigs. Huge amounts of money are allocated for construction of modern toilets in
each household in the rural areas, but its all pocketed by unscrupulous
elements and people continue to defecate in the open. What a pity Bapu! Only
you could do something, only if you were alive till date.
I have heard
that you used to take goat milk. Luckily for me, as a child, I too was fed on
goat milk, for my mother couldn’t afford buffalo or cow milk. Its really
difficult to rear a buffalo now a days. At the first place the buffalo itself
is too costly, ranging between Rupees thirty to forty thousand per animal. And
to feed a buffalo is still a costlier affair, especially when the likes of Mr.
Lalu Yadav and co. have started eying the poor buffalo’s fodder. Its gestation
period of ten months is longer too. The goat, on the contrary feeds on grass
and herbs and breeds faster. It roams all day along and required very little
space to sleep. In your times, when Mr. Kurien had not yet started Amul
project, it would have been indeed difficult to get any other milk. Luckily for
us, when we were in a milk-consuming age, Mr. Kurien had come out with
operation flood and we rarely felt any scarcity of milk. The gentleman lived in
Anand and passed away very recently. He must have met you by now in the heaven
and I am telling you about his demise! What a fool of me!
Bapu, we grew up
singing your favourite bhajans- raghupati raghav rajaram, patit pavan sita
ram and vaishnav jan to tene kahiye, pir parayee jaane re. Ram naam
and Vaishnav, have since become a taboo in our society. The moment you utter
Ram, you are branded as a Shiva sena or VHP wala and to become a vaishnav is a
really difficult preposition, as everybody is eying other’s bahan-beti and
eager to pocketing other’s money. Corruption has become an order of day in this
country. And your favorite Narsi Mehta defined a vaishnav as one who- Vach,
kaaj man nishchal rakhe- oh no, Bapu! Its really difficult. My mind is
always after something or the other. I just can’t give up my temptations. Sorry
Bapu, no body is following these principles in this country any more. And if
anyone tries it, he/she has to wash hands off his/her life. Of course,
raghupati raghav rajaram has seen its new avatar, in a remix to be precise, and
there is every likelihood of this version replacing the older one.
Coming to your
theory of Gram Swaraaj, I must admit that though the theory suits the country
very much, hardly anyone is inclined to implement it. Almost a hundred percent of the rural
households in India don’t have a grinding stone anymore and most of their
farming as well as domestic chores are mechanized. Multi-national corporates have
taken over the local vendors and bullock ploughs are no more to be seen. The
cows, however, still deliver male calfs
as they did in your times. The oxen have no role to play in the Indian farming
and there is an official ban on cow slaughter, owing to which a huge number of
bulls have been rendered useless and are driven away from the villages to the
urban areas, to fend for themselves. There are too many bulls than were ever
required. As a bull suffices for a herd of about seventy cows, there is an
intense competition amongst the bulls for establishing their supremacy over the
others. I personally feel that such stray animals should be exported to beef
eating countries. Please excuse me if I have hurt your religious feelings,
bapu.
While most of
our day to day consumables and toiletries in the villages come from huge MNCs,
and there is hardly anything left to be done by hand, a chunk of the Indian
population is kept busy in watching TV programmes. You will find it hard to
imagine how a Television looks like, for there were hardly any in your times.
Well, it’s a kind of big radio set with a glass panel at the front, on which
you can not only listen but also see films, dramas, songs, commercial
advertisements, news and of course, different types of games. Of late the
country has developed an obsession for a game called cricket. Strangely enough,
even those fancy watching cricket, who have not even touched a cricket bat or
been to a play field in their entire lifetime. Bapu, if this gadget was
available during your times, driving
away the firangs from this country would have bcome really very easy.
Though our
people have done away with your idea of
gram swaraj, we have very fondly embraced panchayati raj system. In
fact, we in this country shall go to any extent, in search of easy money. As
the gram panchayats are allocated huge sums of money, running into several crores
of rupees, and the entire money is swallowed by the office bearers of the
panchayat in connivance with the local officials, the model has become very
popular.
Coming to
education, I would like to inform you that the country’s more than thirty
percent people are still illiterate. Our priorities are different bapu! We
don’t see any reason to go for a literacy drive. There of course, is a need to
provide a mobile telephone set to each Indian. As a result almost each Indian
has a phone, whether or not he/she knows to operate it and read simple texts is
a different issue altogether. Yeah, people in this country love English more
than any other language, even their mother tongue. When the country became
independent, there used to be 1652 languages in india, which have gradually
died away and we are left with just around 300. People fancy using English, in
whatever form they know it. Even the illiterate persons love to speak and write
English. There is a flurry of English medium schools in India and the Indian languages
just languish far behind. Whether or not you like it, the Indian people are
like this only, bapu. They have no love for their culture, their languages and
their value system. Just you show them money and they will do whatever enables
them in making money. English is one such source, which has made them forget
their own mother tongues. You had observed that the educated Indian men didn’t
take their wives to social gatherings as they were not educated in English. To
overcome this, there have come up huge number of coaching institues, which
impart training in spoken English. You
had advised that primary education must be imparted in the child’s mother
tongue. It is however, a matter of shame that most of the urban Indians speak
to their young ones in English. Its good that you didn’t survive to see this
deterioration in the Indian society.
You always
wanted the youth to study useful arts, which would come handy in our day to day
work. Your ashrams used to impart such skills to the inmates. Indian system
has, however, remained devoid of any such planning. Our youth run after degrees
and after jobs thereafter. If, however, their degrees fail to fetch them a job,
they are good for nothing. A farmer’s son feels ashamed of taking it to
farming, once he has got a formal degree. Education in India has generated unemployed
and unemployable youth year after year. In your times there used to be more
number of simple graduates in arts and humanities. Now a days, thanks to the
innumerable Engineering colleges and Management Institutes, there is a flurry
of B.Tech. and MBA qualification holders. Please don’t mistake them for
educated, well mannered and cultured youth. Most of them are good for nothing,
bapu. Believe me. No amount of so called
education has delivered to the Indians the dignity of labour. Most of us don’t
want to work bapu, hence a mad rush to government jobs, which assures
nithallagiri and a hefty salary month after month.
Bapu, if you
remember, you had clipped the long hair of a south Indian doctor’s young wife living
in your ashram in south Africa, because she had become a source of sexual
attraction to a young boy in the ashram. It was indeed a daring step. You had
also turned down a woman’s advances in England, when you had been there to
pursue higher studies. This speaks volumes of your high moral character.
Unfortunately, Virginity and chastity are no more an issue in the Indian
society, the urban one especially. People have become more permissive and
forgiving of the misdeeds of their kiths and kin. Extra-marital and premarital sexual
relationships have become very common now. This is probably the fallout of
rapid urbanization that the country has undergone. Abortion has been legalized.
I know, you would have never approved of such laws. One has to change with the
times, Bapu. What else can we say!
You have
admitted in your auto-biography, of your lust for ba, even when your father was
on his death-bed. This guilt feeling was never to rid your conscience, all
through your life. I salute you for showing so much of respect to your father.
Later on, you kept your words with your mother, which is yet another testimony
of your character. Now a days, however, the Indian youth hardly have any time
and money for their parents. A sense of gratitude and respect for the elderly
is vanishing very fast and the aging Indians are forced to take shelter in
old-age homes. With around eighteen percent of the Indian population above
sixty years of age, this tendency is going to play havoc on the Indian society.
And to make the matters worse, just today, it has been revealed that the
average life expectancy of the Indians has increased by around four and a half
years. Whether it’s a boon or curse, only the times to come shall decide.
I don’t know for
which reason, we Indians just hate a girl child. A skewed male-female sex ratio
has been an obvious outcome of this phenomenon. In certain states there are
just about 870 females behind 1000 males. There is a dearth of brides in the
states like Haryana. A big faction of the hindus are vegetarian and
non-violent, but when it comes to killing their infant daughters and brides,
they outdo even the worst of the beasts on the earth. Thousands of brides are
burnt alive every year for want of dowry.
Bapu, I am
sorry, I have bothered you with so many issues that face the Indian society. I
however, believe that you won’t mind paying a little heed to what I have told
you, for you are the only one to whom we, the hapless Indians can look forward for
solace and succor.
I am not
describing the pathetic state of the Indian polity, for obvious reasons. You
know, I am hardly fifty yet and must survive few more years to see my sons
married and settled. Also my wife wants me to live atleast as long as she
survives. Its therefore, better that I don’t utter a word about the dreaded
species of the Indian politicians. Unlike your times, quite a good number of
the politicians now a days, come from
criminal backgrounds. Satya and Ahimsa are the things of bygone days, bapu.
Hope you understand how risky it is to tell a truth.
Kindly convey my
regards to Ba, Netaji and Chachaji. If you ever get to see in the other part of
the heaven, the revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad etc.
please bless them Bapu. They did a great service to the nation. We all love
them.
Look forward to
seeing you in the heaven, in due course.
Yours obediently
RAMVRIKSH
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