Watching the BBC Documentary
24-Jan-2022
Back Story
Everywhere I was hearing about the BBC documentary, the social media my Phone feed even Instagram was abuzz with the news of this documentary. I even tried directly from BBC IPlayer but with VPN was slow and difficult, it’s named after the most powerful man of our country and I had to see it.
This week I was busy with work and today on our Republic day I got a chance to search it and find it. Simultaneously the new of its Ban and how students were screening it across the universities was flowing in. I was worried, unsure and apprehensive about seeing the documentary, it was about politics, in recent months I have come out completely from the vortex of political news and just started focussing on my life and myself. A trip to Sri Lanka and some a good start to this year had pumped me to see beyond what is the political situation around me and focus on my life. But suddenly watching these documentaries pulled me right at the center of the political vortex which personally I wanted to escape and realized there is no escape.
The Lost News
When Adani bought NDTV I pretty much had given up on reading news. The Hindu was a ghost of it's previous self, Times of India is always mainstream and abreast with time (not publishing what matters), I do not read or watch Times Now, Republic or India Today because of their growing rightist views or being a propaganda bullhorn. The Wire and the likes were too left leaning for me and carried a lot of opinion. The centrist news outlets which matched my tastes are The Print, The Indian Express and till some days back NDTV. For me the growing pay wall of The Indian Express, the dilution of editorial oversight and management of NDTV and the The Print still being abstract and avoiding the mainstream criticism of the policies and politics that matters made me somehow it's better to focus on life and my finances and politics will not feed me or make me rich. And like any prosperous disagreeing German of 1930s either I had to remain silent or leave the country. For me the news is lost and there is so much we do not see or we have become so much numb to the scale of suffering and injustice around us that we (at least I) stopped caring.
The lynching, the ethnic cleansing, the poison filled words on TV, social media and WhatsApp, all these misery I had put on mute. The little bit of charity is also lost.
At Last The Numbness Broke
But watching this documentary both the episodes were some of the most stressful periods of my life. Even my wife told why did I watch it, while I told her that sometimes knowing the misery around helps, deep down I was regretting my decision. It not only reminded the 2002 riots or the Babri riots of 1990s, it also bought the barbarism of NRC protest aftermath, the Assam holding camps, the Delhi violence and the Kashmir lock down.
Most of these events were manufactured to suit a political narrative, but it still persists. It also bought the painful memories of 2016 Note ban, the 2017 GST rollout and the 2020s Covid period which I personally faced. Covid is still fresh, where I saw people dying around me and had survived the hell of Delta variant. The feebleness of human life and its value was so precariously clear in last 2 years that hatred from me is gone. What’s left in me is desperation and a will to live. But the way human life was taken 20 years back, the way the leadership that should have bought calm butchered its own people, the depth of manufactured hatred and the blood thirsty ego of being of a majority religion made me realize how hate can make us animals even worst than being inhuman and that broke me and my numbness and what ever facade of a normal life I was building seemed feeble.
The Shared Blame
When taking credit we all come forward with all glory, when ever India succeeds or even an unrelated Indian does something or achieves something we take credit as a national pride. It also relevant to the shared hatred that we spill out on TV, social media and even in our daily conversations if anyone does not subscribe to our belief or the raging belief of our times. As I grow old and as I gain more wisdom and experience I see the futility of hatred and the dangers it hold.
We ascribe great reverence to brashness, chauvinism, steadfast and relentlessness. Forgetting that with statesmanship and kindness the person can be a great leader but with hatred can become the biggest nemesis. Given that our leaders of today are a product of a system and organization that also breeds hatred filled with narrow religious dogma in the guise of discipline and ultra nationalism, its difficult to escape the blame when acts of etheric cleansing, lynching and systematic constitutional subjugation of an entire race happens in front of our naked eyes.
Even we support it, oppose it or ignore it, the times we live in and the republic we live the blame of the grave injustice has to be shared. Its similar to what’s justified as the shared blame that Kashmiris have to share for the decades of persecution that Hindu Pandits, they had to face in 2019 or the shared persecution that Sikhs had to face in Punjab in its troubled years.
The Wheel of Karma
Our time will come and the cost will be high, I believe in the wheel of Karma, somehow I relate the 2020–2022 as the years where Karma with its act of god affected the world but also India. But if we continue in our path to hatred even humanity will not spare us, Russian sanctions are a stark reminder, we as a nation are as disposable as a big power like Russia is and if we do not start worrying about our human rights and what we spread and stop hatred, it will soon impact us and our country in bad ways.
We are a disposable pawn in the Western geopolitical chess with China & Russia. Middle East will care less about us, what they say and what they do are different. Despite all the push to manufacturing, infrastructure building and push for cutting edge technology still the backbone of our economy are its people. While one can divide it in the name of vote and power the fissures that we are creating now will destroy the economy and disable its resilience.
Naked Horror
The naked horror described in the documentary is beyond comprehension, I have seen some visuals over the years but the narration from victims were heart wrenching and hearing that the perpetrators were out on bail even after committing unspoken horror, rape and murder and the complicity of the law enforcement in aiding and abetting the crimes reminded me of an African country, not a developing democratic country. The charred bodies, the mass beating of helpless victims, the crying mothers of their lost sons and daughters, the men who lost their mothers, relatives, children and pregnant wife. The killers boasting of chopping, raping pregnant women and children and burning and killing. I had to write it to put to words the nakedness of horror and that is what disturbed me the most.
This documentary is not for everyone and people who can handle the depression and desperation or breed religious hatred to the core, should see. Others should avoid. This documentary is about the targeting of a specific community and some of them should see it even if they do not agree with the narrative.
No Words to Write
I want to keep writing but I have no words to write anymore, for I have resigned to this country’s fate and fate of the next generation and that was visible even in Arundhati Roy’s words where she said she fears the backlash and still she went ahead just to put her views as a documentary evidence. The more we write, the more that is spoken for or against, the more documentaries or movies are made on our leaders or their ideology, it only feeds into his persona, aura and cult. Hence I also feel this documentary should be banned, it breaks the facade that some of us are trying to build and live a normal life. Times are hard, we need to focus on our life and families, the minority community knows starkly what to expect, the voice of dissent knows the cost of criticism. So not much to write.
And my humble request to the readers who read this and get agitated or want to report, I had no wish to write and wish that this blog is burrier deep down in the sand pit of internet. But writing is the only way I can clear my head and move on, it will be hard but hope I can move on.
Final Words
Spirituality, mindfulness, positivity, live and let live, peace, nature, love, passion, kindness, forgiveness, silence and pragmatism are some of great words which I have been able to experience and bringing to my life and passing to others. It’s so important that we follow these words and make our life better and fulfilling. But I will also add wisdom, learning, mindful exploration, travel and empathy that will help us to develop the critical psyche needed to grow an intellect which is forward thinking, evolving and accommodative. Pause & self evaluation is another thing missing in today’s generation that will help us to be critical thinkers and even if we can not be unbiased but will help us before committing acts of horror and even preventing injustice or at least being the passive voices that can act when it matters.
Am still disturbed, depressed and scared to write these words, but at least you read this and if you want still to see the documentary, then its your wish.
