Ancient India - A Modern Fantasy. Modern India - An Ancient Curse

India is a nascent country, born from the womb of the British Raj through an illegitimate alliance between the Indian National Congress and the Victorian monarchy. It has other bastard siblings in Pakistan and Bangladesh and like most impoverished families that quarrel over everything; be it choice cuts of prime meat or the next square meal, India and it's communally seperated siblings quarrel over land holdings or resources.

But the quarrel is recent. India was never at war. India was never against communities or races. India was never threatened by social retardation or moral deprevation. INDIA WAS NEVER THERE!

A conglomerate of independent states united with the hope of joint military might against foreign occupation, pillage, rape, and anhilation formed the borders of a country called India in 1947. Nationalistic puritans and chronologically-challenged historians may argue that the seed of Hindustan was planted much before that. But 'much before' in the eyes of history is just a blink of an eyelid in comparision to the vast sleep that the people of this geographic region have been in. A sleep of  passiveness in personal peril, incompetence in international relations, disillusion in domestic politics, and apathy towards active growth and prosperity. 

So what is India? Is it Mahatma Gandhi's insanity or Jawahar Lal Nehru's democratic effigy? Or is it the personal vehicle of the palm-touting Congress? To be fair and equally critical, others have also used this icon to their benefit. The saffron bandwagon parade this as their maatrubhoomi. The benefit-seeking socio-impoverished front this as their soverignity. And the aam aadmi hate it as their funerary.

If one steps out of the pathos-ridden politics, it is feudary fencing that dominates the dailys. From Azad Kashmir Jihaadis to Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. From Guerrilla Maoist Gurkhas to Kirpan toting Khalistan Canvassers. The fabric of this child nation in unraveling. And in the process, it is bringing out hate, violence, blood, and gore.

Another ingredient in the recipe for commotion are the 'holier than thou' religious fanatics. All of them preach the purity of soul and trample non believers indiscriminately under their soles as they march on for their Gods.

And with all this activity the common man wakes up to inflation, trudges to cost-arbitrage work, gets recessionary pink-slipped, pays inflated taxes, curses the defunct national machinery, drinks his pension fund in hooch, and drifts into a woeful slumber that rudely awakens him back to the drudgery.

We have failed in an attempted fantasy of democracy. We have created a Frankenstein monster from the deliberate offals of erstwhile monarchies. Each state dumps its toxic gentry into a cauldron of kingship that magically boils and bubbles into the government.

Romantics believe that if we exercise our franchise we can vote out the malignant tumors and elect sensibility. It is asking for magic from a lot that doesn't think too much before hocking the bovine-like chewed cud of beetel nuts causing blotches of blood-like stains on the face of their motherland like a virulent strain of smallpox fated to last forever.

Mera Bharat Mahaan Kahaan?