It is not merely the truth about the media, or history, or freedom, or corruption, or compromise of institutions, or riots, or most foreign reports, or UAPA arrests, or ECI compromise, or Electoral Bonds, or PM Cares fund, or basic science that they are up against. It's truth as a concept.
What has been the war about?
If you do not spend most of your time watching prime time 'news' or scrolling through Whatsapp or reels, chances are high that you are aware of the absolute corruption of truth in India in the recent few years. It has had a few distinguishable characteristics-
An overt emphasis on a glorious, mythical, and absolutely false past.
Obviously biased media, and raided and oppressed if not (not just the BBC)
The dominance of a religious majoritarian bias in the government and extended projection of religious determinism
Protection of select corporates
Focus on India as a Nationalist concept rather than a Nation
Hiding basic facts
Alright, so the characteristics are perhaps not so distinguished. They are, in fact, exactly like those in Germany during the 1936 Summer Olympics or the PNF's pamphlets in 1930s Italy. Even more, the war has thus been settled too, finding many parallels in the past; no dust ever settles in wars on truth, it flows away mixed in the river of blood.
What is truth?
For the Mahatma, the truth was non-violence (Satyagraha). Suppose the radical leftists of now are to be believed. In that case, truth is just narcissistic mumblings (or subjective), or if the roots are to be considered, it is derived from a Germanic abstract noun *treuwitho, from Proto-Germanic treuwaz meaning "having or characterized by good faith". However, standards of reasoning starting from the Enlightenment era and definitely during the Modernist period, have rightly correlated truth and proof ("that which is in accordance with reality"). Reality only has psychiatric exceptions in extreme illnesses, otherwise, despite the philosophical misnomer most equate reality with material reality (or, again, the reality). It is this reality, thus, that is the truth. The fact that you and I are made of atoms, and there are eight planets, or urine can't cure illnesses (but will most certainly cause them), or BBC is constantly on the peak of the world's most trusted news networks...
The BJP's war on truth has been an unaccommodating, unrelenting, and murderous (literally) one. For convenience's sake, let's divide the nature of the Truth in question into four areas: Science, International Facts, Internal Statistics, and the History of India (and the world).
Science: Piss, Shit, and the (both)heads of the BJP:
Prominent BJP leaders have repeatedly lauded the 'benefits' of drinking or eating animal excreta and stayed in power, promoted, and praised. We all are aware of the MP BJP MLA Pragya Thakur who had stated repeatedly that shit and piss cured her cancer and not surgery, despite doctors later saying that she had had multiple surgeries. Assam BJP MLA Suman Haripriya had claimed in the state assembly that gaumutra (cow urine) and gobar (cow dung) could be used for the prevention of coronavirus. BJP MLA Surendra Singh from UP, Gopal Sharma (Meerut), and many more have been promoting consuming animal secretion for 'health'.
But the war on science does not end on a mere politicised zoophilic kink, the BJP had been repeatedly trying to 'debunk' Aryan Migration (the only thing 'debunked' is rightly no longer called 'invasion', which simply has a lesser possibility and is likely to be one of the many factors of the Harrppan downfall and not the sole one), evolution, continental drift (plate tectonics for my nerds), big bang (it was not really a 'bang'), and everything else that does not fit their hysterical rhetoric. The worst offender has to be the Ministry of AYUSH, better called the Ministry of PLACEBO, made to promote 'alternative' (i.e. non-functional) 'medicines' like Ayurveda (grass+), Yoga (prolongated stretching), Unani (Grass+ but Islamic), Siddha (again, Grass+ but Southern), and Homeopathy (Sugar pills). This had been the greatest step ever taken to officialize untruth and promote actively harmful (by discouraging actual treatment) things in the country in the field of medicine.
Your Truth, No Truth; Untruth, Our Truth
While the PM who is seemingly living in a Xi Jinping-style bubble, deprived of any truth or criticism in his reports and from his party members (who, no joke, often call him the 'supreme leader') would like you to believe that our International image is of a 'world leader' and 'mother of democracy' (a literary and historical abomination), it can't be further from the truth. For just a glimpse, the USA's Government funded think-tank Freedom House no longer lists India as a 'free' country, having lowered its status to 'partially free'. All the Media Freedom Indices (most prominently the one by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, which lists us at 142 out of 150 countries), Education Indices, Communal and Hate Crimes against Minorities (400% rise), Democracy indices (flawed democracy- EIU), Wealth Inequality indices, social equality Indices (123), and most controversially and recently the Malnutrition index, etc constantly lists India highly unfavourable, to say the least. The 'sab changa hai" BJP, however, instead of attempting to accept and improve the conditions of citizens and democracy in the country, opts more often than not to deny the reports and its Prime-time media agents then pick up the slack opting for character assassination on these institutions, going so far as to link investing in pension-funds in a country with a favourable scheme as that country's conspiracy against India (i.e. BBC and China).
In Own Land, Truth is Maan-Ki-Baat
Let's do a rapid-fire:
- Demonetization actually increased black money and didn't increase digital payments
- Data from Kashmir ordered to be hidden, Media agents on a roll to propagate just how happy the populace there is. The Entire place has become a jail cell (most brilliantly explained by Anuradha Bashin in her book)
- Joshinath data was ordered to be hidden from the public recently
- Blockage of the Internet every time, everywhere there are peaceful protests. Most recently in Haryana (India ranks on the top in "Internet Authoritarianism" report, having had the world's most shutdowns)
- Data about farmers' suicide hidden
- PM Cares and Electoral Bonds legalizing corruption, amounts hidden
- Petroleum and LPC prices (one of the most important matters during the INC, is an insignificant matter nowadays; for the protection of life and liberty, and thus by reason the constitution itself is on the verge of collapse)
- The sheer rise in UAPA arrests and reason hidden.
- Impossibility of bail in ED cases now, as reason can be hidden.
- "Sealed Cover" correspondence with SC in Rafael deals and recently proposed in Adani Case too
- Adani deals and frequent breaches of legal provisions by the governments in those (for example clause for diversification of operations, loan amount ceiling, etc)
- This list will not end.
History, Our Story:
No one seems to be keener to destroy our history than the Home Minister, though he did have a major challenger in the form of the British. Who is better at it is contested. Repeatedly calling for 'rewriting the history', spreading lewd conspiracies about former leaders and the Mahatma, worshipping queen Victoria for freeing India from Mughals, renaming the Mughal heritage (most recently, Mughal Gardens built in the signature Mughal style to 'Amirt Udyan"), giving some Rajput or other Hindu leaders way more credit than they deserve, calling the English's rats like Savarkar 'freedom fighters', praising and even worshipping India's first terrorist and Savarkar's disciple Nathuram Godse, and so on.
No one has been more of a target of the BJP than Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India first Prime Minister. However, it is completely understandable. He voiced extensively for scientific temper, truth, education and reason. He encouraged his own party members to criticise him and wrote against himself anonymously. He fostered secularism, independence, unity, and tolerance. He was, above all, a principled and learned man. All these have no place in the dominant Goon-fear political tactics of the BJP. Hence, instead of even vaguely attempting to live up to and respect his legacy (the legacy being a united, tolerant, and progressive India itself), they'd much rather destroy it. Lies about him and Gandhi have somehow become the dominant narratives now, from mishandling Kashmir to partitioning India, outright untruths are now the status quo.
This hate of the Indian freedom Movement is coupled with a completely false narrative about its ancient past. As Arundhati Roy said, there are no fake facts, they are fake narratives. Hindus nowadays argue more for a magical past than religious faith. Of course,
the slightest understanding of geography or evolution compels one to laugh at these nonsensical rhetorics, but the fact is that understanding is not popular, lesser now definitely, lesser still has become the will to learn the truth. This leads us to the BJP paradox
Conclusion: The BJP Paradox.
The BJP paradox is that as lesser people subscribe to all this vile nonsense and rhetoric, the lesser likely they are to support the BJP. Thus, the BJP's failures (in terms of science and education) have led to popular support for them. In simple words, the worse a job at Education and truth they do (and by extension development), the more people support them.
It is thus now a situation of the Individual vs the institutions (or all Institutions). Even if one supports the BJP, as they have indeed done some good work like in select foreign affairs or PMJDY, it is in their own personal best interest to criticize the absolute destruction of truth and reason the BJP has undertaken. As political as this write-up appears, it is not advocating for or promoting any political party, but merely trying to lay out the obvious harm being done to the people by one of those. The historical patterns are extremely obvious at this point. Authoritarianism tests patience at every little step, it does not 'just happen'. However, despite everything, and especially despite the data suppression of the discontent and protests, the BJP seems to have miscalculated one major thing: people of India may be gullible, but they are not blind.
コメント