XPost: soc.culture.indian, alt.fan.jai-maharaj, alt.politics
XPost: talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.india
From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com

When The 'Voice Of A Nation' Was Sold For A Bottle Of Whiskey

By Rajat Mitra
Psychologist and Author of 'The Infidel Next Door' https://voicesold.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 6, 2019

Last week I attended a book launch for a friend in Delhi.
One of the speakers, a journalist of national stature who
was also the compere, during his speech began to compare
the working style of the two prime ministers under whom he
worked, one Manmohan Singh and the other Narendra Modi
during travel.

He began by saying how the journalists and the media
personnel accompanied the two prime ministers during their
trips abroad. For the former he described how anyone and
everyone would be included depending upon his or her
closeness to the inner circle. He described the choicest
food and the most expensive alcoholic drinks that flowed
like water during the time the former prime minister
travelled. He described how when a journalist would enter
his room after checking in, an expensive bottle of black
label would be waiting for him alongside with a note 'with
best compliments' from the external ministry.

The two prime ministers have vastly different working
styles, he shared. Manmohan Singh would work at the most
half a day and for the rest half they would leave for sight
seeing and even visiting nightclubs and tourist spots, all
expenses paid for by the ministry, the matter being kept
discreet.

A press room would be set up with the most exotic foods
from around the world being made available and again
expensive alcoholic drinks would be available for the
asking. He said many of the journalists would pick up
bottles and carry them to their room to be given as gifts
later.

When the journey would end, they would be given a bottle of
black label scotch as a parting gift along with many other
freebies. The ostentation and gluttony reached its peak
during the second term of Manmohan Singh, he added saying
most of them vied to be as close to the lutyens media as
they could so that they could be included in each trip.

While describing the working style of Narendra Modi during
foreign trips, his tone changed. "With him we had to work
long hours with few gaps in between. There were no pleasure
trips but two programs scheduled daily and the schedules
were so tightly packed, people had to hurry to not miss
their meals. And the alcoholic drinks were replaced with
tea, coffee and some biscuits."

"And what did the journalists write during Manmohan Singh's
time?" Someone next to me in the audience asked.

"They had to protect Manmohan Singh and project him as a
good and honest man. And, well, they had a second agenda
too, that was discreet." A woman who identified herself as
a journalist in the audience said they all would go on such
trips too for another reason. "We had to sing paeans and
praises for the queen." The audience laughed out loud.

The audience heard him spellbound and laughed at his jokes,
by now too common. Though what he said was common
knowledge, it still was a revelation the way he described
it in minute detail with all the 'mirch masala'. The
audience laughed at the comparison each time he made of the
two styles of the prime ministers. After the debauchery of
the time period spent with Manmohan Singh, it was very
difficult for the journalists to adapt to the stoic
discipline of Narendra Modi he added. "Everyone resented it
and cursed the change."

As the lecture ended and we were coming out a young woman
from the audience asked the journalist, "Tell me something.
Where was your conscience all this while?"

He was surprised at the question and looked straight at
her, "Why only ask me?" he said, his eyebrows raised.
"Where was the conscience of everyone? Where was the
conscience of the nation?" saying this he walked away.

Two different leaders. Two different time periods. Two men
with the responsibility of leading a nation. Yet the two
periods are marked by sharp differences, sound unreal and
Kafkaesque as different as night and day, one that we have
survived. While the former bought off the voice of the
fourth pillar by silencing them with greed, the other has
distanced itself from it and is hated.

What the journalist said was that when the very conscience
of our nation slept, why only a single individual should be
asked to bear the responsibility for the collective failure
of our conscience to speak up? But is that a valid line of
argument?

Why did our conscience disappear for ten years? Did we kill
it like Abhimanyu of Mahabharata encircling and forgetting
what makes us human is our inner voice? Why did we as a
nation, didn't raise our voice against injustice after
injustice, wrongs that we saw committed in front of our
eyes? Why is so our collective voice weak and doesn't make
itself heard like a rule of law society should?

Sometime ago I was watching a film, the trial of a mass
murderer for crimes against humanity. To every question
asked by the judge of the international court, he had only
one answer. "I was only following my orders. I had no
choice to do otherwise." After listening to him patiently,
the judge pronounced him guilty and stated, "Each one of us
is an agent of his or her own free will and has the choice
to say 'no' when we face evil. If you didn't, that was your
choice and still was an act of free will."

The choice to not support, to say 'no' to a wrong, to any
evil is the last of the freedom as described by Victor
Frankel in his book 'Man's search for meaning'. We can
exercise it even when we may have reached the point where
death is certain and life has stopped to offer any meaning.
This freedom belongs to us as an individual, not to the
collective and we must guard it. That is where we as people
have to take it away from those who stole it from us.

When we lost our land, our religion, our culture to
invaders, we also lost this last of the freedom to express.
We also lost the awareness that we are its only keepers. We
have come close to losing it again when we give power to
those who think everything about Indians is up for sale
including its conscience. Isn't it time we retrieve it?
Will the future generations then ask us why did we sell our
nation for something as cheap as a bottle of whiskey?

-- Rajat Mitra
Psychologist and Author of 'The Infidel Next Door'

https://voicesold.blogspot.com/2019/04/when-voice-of-nation-was-sold-for.html

More articles at:

https://voicesold.blogspot.com

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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