Editor,
All ‘revelations’ of Ganesh and Karna representing plastic surgery and test tube baby technology, respectively, practiced in ancient India, or that radars turn ineffective during cloud cover have been despatched to oblivion when compared to the latest self-proclamation of the ‘god’s emissary’, directly sent to Earth, knocking all norms of biology upside down, to ‘uplift’ the ‘wretched’ India where “nothing happened in first 67 years.”
Cold-bloodedly demolishing the sector of education, so that minds do not get enlightened enough to pose crucial questions to the authority; setting up a close set of cronies as support system and surrounded by shameless sycophants; living a lavish lifestyle at the expense of human rights of the poor, exploited subjects in diamond mines; mesmerising the world through all things which glitter; erecting grand statues to celebrate himself and to build up a vulgar personality cult – what a resemblance of the kingdom of Hirak to the times we practically live in!
Megalomania and brainwashing programme had been nicely presented in Satyajit Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe, in which the ruthless king of Hirak cannot tolerate any form of opposition. And whoever desires to swim opposite the mainstream and is perceived as ‘enemy of the state’ gets immediately detained and thereafter brainwashed to sing the praise of the king, akin to god.
As if billions of precious money (of the taxpayers of the country, including indirect tax) getting squandered for a decade just for self-promotion of an individual(who is constitutionally bound to render selfless service to the nation) was not enough, now the ‘non-biological’ god bit has also been dished to the subjects of this secular nation where Article 51(A) of the Constitution specifically says that “it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.”
Surely the iconic Hirak Rajar Deshe film by the much far-sighted master has turned full circle now.
Perhaps the situation is worse. While the kingdom of Hirak was an absolute monarchy, we are citizens of a constitutionally democratic country.
While the subjects in that kingdom were physically despatched to ‘Jantar Mantar Ghar’, so as to brainwash them relating to the divinity of the king of Hirak, simple verbal self-assertion, zealous bankrupt rhetoric and playing to the gallery are enough to mesmerise the gullible citizens to convince them of the divinity of the speaker concerned.
A society gets judged by the leaders it chooses. Indeed what a fall, my countrymen!
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata