Pest control of India

The nation needs some pest control to rid us of cockroaches and so on, says renowned actor Anupam Kher. Since he has appointed himself as some sort of a government spokesperson, it seems that these accursed cockroaches and other pests are all those who oppose the Bharatiya Janata Party government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If you want it number-wise, that’s 69 per cent of India’s voting population since the BJP-led alliance won the 2014 general election on 31 per cent of the vote. But let’s dump that old and now boring numbers game. Let’s instead argue that even one person who disagrees with the government or the majority or this or that political establishment, is worth defending.

Because I would like someone to stand up for me, the human cockroach, in Mr Kher’s eyes. Now I know that some of you over-educated types, possibly even from, shudder, Jawaharlal Nehru University, will start babbling about Franz Kafka and use words like metamorphosis. Not having had the benefit of studying at JNU but with a proper anti-national background from another much older college, I can at least claim to have read and admired Don Marquis’ poetry-typing cockroach, Archy. There is almost nothing about Mr Kher’s ideas that I admire.

And yet, and this is unbearably weak of me, I do not think that Mr Kher needs to be pest-controlled. He should be allowed to live a wonderful life free of boric acid or whatever, entertaining us with his incredible love for India, the Prime Minister of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party of India and so on. Who knows, I may even pay money to watch Mr Kher act in a movie because his acting in movies is certainly preferable to his posturing as a public intellectual.

I am lucky of course, because I may be a human cockroach, but I am not a student at JNU. I do not hold extreme radical positions. I do not take part in student meetings where difficult and uncomfortable questions are raised. Because if I was, there would be no one to save me and, in fact, by Mr Kher’s recommendation, a whole lot of killer chemicals would be sent my way.

If I were a student at JNU with radical thoughts, I could be arrested right away. I could be beaten up by lawyers in spite of police protection. My friends and relatives could be hounded, intimidated and questioned. I could be labelled, tagged and put away as an anti-national. All this is before a trial. And what is my biggest crime in all this by the way Sloganeering. That’s it. Shouting. If shouting was a seditious crime, imagine how delightfully comprehensible our TV prime time debates would be.

For someone to say that they are opposed to the execution of Afzal Guru on charges of terrorism may be a difficult, reprehensible and unconscionable position for you or me. But this is not the first time anyone has taken this position. And thus that horrible word, even worse than anti-national, springs to mind: hypocrite.

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is in a coalition government with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir. The PDP has a good relationship with Kashmiri separatists and the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was a supporter of Afzal Guru. Therefore, it is not seditious to speak in favour of Afzal Guru, a convicted terrorist executed by the Indian state in February 2013, if you are a politician, but it amounts to sedition if you are a student Does Mr Kher have the courage to compare the PDP to cockroaches that need pest control or would he just dismiss that as mere political expediency as an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue did on TV the other day

It is another matter that the student in jail, Kanhaiya Kumar, did not raise anti-India slogans, did not burn the Constitution of India, unlike the present chief minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal, many years ago, and a bunch of BJP members in Gwalior the other day, and did not, in fact, do most of the things he has been accused of. Unless, of course, you consider the fact that he does not subscribe to the BJP’s idea of politics and is in fact a Leftist.

Perhaps in today’s India just by being a Marxist or a Leftist you are automatically anti-national, seditious, traitorous and such. Makes you wonder why they allow Left parties to even stand for elections. Makes you wonder even more why the Prime Minister was so keen on releasing all those files about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose since the party he founded, the All-India Forward Bloc, is clearly in the Left block. Oh, perhaps, they did not know that. So as an aside, would Bose be seen as a nationalist or anti-national in today’s India

I concede that it is unfair of me to target Mr Kher like this. And I also concede that cockroaches like me should know their place and eat their boric acid bread balls quietly and go gently into the night. The nation has to be saved from people who question the government, people who disagree with common discourse. People who have varying, opposing or difficult points of view. Students who want to challenge the status quo. Young people who are pushing the envelope as far as they can. These are dangerous people, people who make your mind work and people who can make you uncomfortable. They can break down the narrow little walls we build for ourselves, they can challenge our limitations.

Why do we need such people in our society when we can live in our cosy shibboleths, all believing the same thing and all mouthing the same ideas What a beautiful nation that would be, right All homogenous, no challenges, no arguments, no charges and counter charges. Just field after field of the same crop, no trees, no other flowers, no other animals, no other insects...

Yes, I know what you cockroaches are going to say: Who wants to live in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia Do you

The writer is a senior journalist who writes on media affairs, politics and social trends