LEECHOCRATIC ANIMAL WORLD OF OURS
Khaliqur Rahman
This animal world has WMD and BMW and what not. The
most lethal WMD is HYPOCRISY. They call it democracy. And now, democracy is
realized as: of the leeches, for the leeches and by the LEECHES. Every five years,
the bidder leeches are selected and nominated and, therefore, authorized to go up
to the smallest of all the leeches and ask for just a drop of blood. The Party
that thus raises the largest blood-bank is allowed to suck blood for five
years. They thus suck blood out of the smaller and the smallest leeches. The
beauty of it is no one is seen doing so. But blood is pumped, then, siphoned
into hidden tanks many thousand miles away from the LEECHLAND, emerging now as
the fourth power.
I pity Anna and now also fear for him. The leeches are
after his blood. Across the border, I fear for Imran Khan. I pitied him when he
took it upon himself to turn leeches into human beings by his inspiring
campaign: tehreek. I believe he has
inspired many but I fear when the time comes and when they go to collect blood,
they may not suck all of him. I have the same fear for Anna and his team which
now has the General but without arms. Have they turned into Modern Tragic Heroes
whose tragic flaw, according to Arthur Miller, is, in fact their flawless
‘flawed’ strength of character.
Arthur Miller says: In the Modern Tragic Hero, the
tragic flaw is his inherent unwillingness to remain passive to the challenge to
his dignity. The passive majority is “flawless”, because it does not retaliate but
accepts the lot. But there are always a few who choose to act against the
scheme of things to shake up and awaken the majority out from fear,
insensitivity and ignorance. Out of this total onslaught by the Hero against
the seemingly “unchangeable” environment is born “terror and fear”, classically
associated with tragedy.
Pardon me my swim along the stream of consciousness
put across here - out and loud but perhaps unclear. But why has humanity,
generally, all over the globe, and particularly, in the sub-continent, come to
such a pass?
I think the short answer to this question is:
Education has failed. And, the long answer is:
Education does not mean, should not have meant, a
Degree Minting Machine and a Churning Machine to get to the Degree Minting
Machine and push the button. Education should have aimed at turning boys and
girls, men and women, in short, Man into Human Beings.
Education is not just formal education in schools and
colleges. Education, in fact, used to start in the Mother’s lap where she would
sow the seeds of all that we’d call Religion and Morality later. As we grew, a Maulvi Saheb (Arabic teacher) or a Panditji (Sanskrit teacher) used to come to discipline us in the language of the
religion: Arabic or Sanskrit.
That was not all. There was an undeclared
proclamation: Never inside home after school and never outside home after the
lights are on. This meant sports and games, clubs or Akhadas (wrestling rings of dry mud). Where has that
after-school-until-dark slot gone? Playfields are, in fact. The training
grounds for problem solving.
Then, pupils with the right aptitude would seek
initiation (bait or diksha) into spiritual learning and
training.
Thus developed well formed personalities of character
in all the three dimensions – physical, mental and spiritual.
The world today critically lacks in spiritual wisdom.
There are spiritually developed souls around but there are no seekers. The
pseudo seekers go to modern god-men – they are aplenty – who, in fact, seek the
seekers. The god-men thus solve their mundane problems and the seekers stand
where they did.
In the sub-continent, after Independence, the two
countries should have filed their differences for 2047 and aimed at good
education. They should have sent Macaulay packing as well and should have
embraced Gandhi’s Nai Talim (New
Education) to produce human beings.
Just think who took to teaching in 1948. Most of them
whose choice of teaching was the last! Thus all along bad teachers have
produced worse officers and perhaps the worst in other fields. The cycle of
producing bad then worse and then the worst has gone many times over. The Time
now is completely out of joint and everything is rotten here there and
everywhere.
Moral degradation leading to corruption has eaten deep
into the vertebrae of the system. Be it the politician, the officer, the
teacher and the religious head, all of them are living in the name of high
ideals but, in fact, dying for silver, gold and land. Hypocrisy had never been
this stark naked.
Activism: religious, moral and political starts in the
mouth and stays there!
