This was written very soon after the demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya and the subsequent riots. I was just aghast at the senseless riots that rocked the nation. I have always taken pride in being an equal citizen of the world's largest secular democracy. That faith lay shaken... as a journalist, a mother, a wife, a daughter, something in me revolted. This is neither poem nor prose. It uses the lines of a poem by Ravindranath Tagore that I hold sacred, juxtaposing each line of that vision of the founding fathers of India with the harsh realities of today...
The architects of modern India had a vision, a dream that helped them break the shackles of foreign oppression and give posterity a free India to breathe in. Presented below are images of that dream juxtaposed with the stark and agonising reality of the present, the nightmare that the dream has changed to---
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high....
Ayodhya,. December 6. The nation hangs its head in shame as the three domes of the 465-year-old Babri mosque come crashing down, one by one, amid frenzied chants of Jai Shri Ram. And significantly, as this symbol of Muslim identity collapses, screams are heard from the Muslim dominated regions of Ayodhya where a fanatic mob is out on a mission to destruct...
Where knowledge is free...
Images of the brutal, unprecedented, planned attacks on the fourth pillar of democracy-- the press. Ripped clothes of women reporters, smashed cameras, bleeding bewildered scribes, unarmed, unprepared against the systematised attack...
Where the world has not been broken up into narrow domestic walls,-- where words come out from the depths of truth...
The betrayal of the highest court of the land by a democratically-elected government that goes back on its written pledge. Ragukul reet sada chali aayi, pran jaayi par vachan na jaayi? (In Ram's family and among his followers, it is a tradition that one would rather die than go back on his given word... the basis tenet of Lord Rama's life.)
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit...
Images again...this time of Uma Bharti ecstatically hugging Murli Manohar Joshi as the third dome tumbles down...saffron hordes clearing the debris... holding aloft bricks of the desecrated structure like treasured trophies. But is this the debris of the Babri mosque alone that they are clearing... for somewhere in that rubble is buried the myth of Hindu tolerance, for in a Hindu Rashtra-- their version of modern India-- there is no need for myths. The mask has been lifted off the face of the world's largest secular democracy. And the face beneath it is horrifyingly ugly.
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action...
The idols of Ram lalla, hastily installed at a makeshift temple atop the mute remains of the Babri mosque...which God would condone this?
Into that heaven of freedom my Father, let my country awake...
The stench of death and doom hangs in the air as curfew is imposed in city after city in the wake of the incidents at Ayodhya. In the eyes of the world overnight, the image of India has changed from a tolerant, secular democracy to a fascist mobocracy led by religious fanatics. And the perpetrators of this sit smug, unrepentant...
Quo vadis India?
Quo vadis my Indians?
QUO VADIS???
(With humble apologies to Gurudev for my temerity)
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