The 2014 election of ‘hope’ is over. The time for slogans and whirling words is now past. The ruling party must now understand that Modi is right when he says:

Desh chal pada hai…Hum chalen ya na chalen (The nation is now moving. We may or may not move) Yes, one of the benefits of an awakening is that the nation remains no longer dependent on the constricted thinking of one party or the few men who claim to be the leaders. So what if Modi is now on the seat that is supposed to lead the people of India… the nation is already moving and the leader must necessarily judge this mood and make the right noises, adopt the right stances, and take the right actions.

Obviously then, the right actions mean there must be no deliberate attempt to steer the nation away from its secular ambience. If steered away from its secular nature, not all of the 1.25 billion steps will march in unison and the result will be clashing decibels of destructive noise. We do not need this. Not now that the nation has begun to move. We need to remind the ruling party that Modi has already told us that he believes that when 1.25 billion people take a step in the same direction, we will actually have taken 1.25 billion steps in totality.

The new leadership mustn’t stray into the wilderness of the future as hunting parties aiming to win a few scattered smiles on the display of the carcases of those who are perceived as treacherous. They must remember the rule of the jungle that every animal has its role to play and necessarily adds to our social eco-system that propels us into the future. The lines that I wrote this evening are quite well placed to make this point firmer:

Did I stop & offer my visiting card
To the curious Yak near Hikkim?
No, I smiled & just let him
Be his own Bard!

The new government really must think about transforming the tokenism that exists as education into an entity that delivers. Let them be brave enough to convert us all into individuals who can think for themselves instead of letting the vast majority to remain happy at being herded. We are not a society of the hordes and the herds… we need to rise as a nation where almost everyone dares to step out of his home and vote when the time comes. This will be the true benchmark of a people who have got their thinking hemispheres placed correctly.

We need to be a nation that places the right pauses and stops when a sentence is complete. We need to be a nation unafraid of using question-marks when they are needed. We need to be a nation where exclamations are not frowned at. We need to be a nation that has the liberty to create new words and new usages by a discrete use of hyphens. We need to be a nation where foreign words and phrases are accepted and adopted in the main-stream of our language. We need to be a nation that is ready to march ahead with its grammar in place!

Yes, Modi needs to remember that coming together is far better than going alone… but then, he has already said: Hamari taqat sanghathan hai! (Our strength is in unity!)

 

 

Arvind Passey
27 May 2014

This article was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 26 May 2014…

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