{"id":399,"date":"2016-04-26T00:50:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T00:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=399"},"modified":"2016-04-26T00:50:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T00:50:44","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-father-of-the-nation-independence-day-mahatma-gandhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=399","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the Father of the Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

D<\/span>ear Gandhiji,\n\n<\/p>We’ve been missing you! I thought you might appreciate an update on India as you peer down on us from the Great Ashram in the Sky. It\u2019s been a while since you were last here and some things have changed, while others are still very much the same.<\/span>\n\nFor starters, there are a lot more of us than there were in 1948. Trivial fact, but our population has approximately tripled since your time. Imagine how much faster we could have sent the British packing if we\u2019d had three freedom fighters for every one we honour today! <\/span>\n\nOf course, it\u2019s not like sections of the country aren\u2019t trying to thin the herd. We\u2019ve come up with so many different ways: exhorting a change of address to Pakistan, actively lynching dissenters in the street, and running over people on pavements. You might want to look both ways while crossing the street before attempting a Dandi March these days. <\/span>\n\nBut I don\u2019t want to depress you. We\u2019re getting to be a clean country now. Swachh Bharat is the baby of our current Prime Minister, from your home state of Gujarat. He invokes your name and uses your glasses as the emblem of the movement. He wants to gift you a clean India for your 150th birthday in 2019 and has released many campaigns and spent millions of rupees trying to tell us to stop littering and defecating. We may be far from achieving the target, but our states are leaving no stone unturned in exaggerating<\/a> the number of toilets built under the scheme.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nI\u2019m not discouraged by the fact that the pile of rubbish on my street corner hasn\u2019t diminished in size and the fact that there are more crows and rats picking up garbage than sanitation workers. I put it down to an avian\/rodent quota for these posts. <\/span>\n\nSpeaking of quotas. Now I know why you weren\u2019t too keen on the idea back then. You once even stated that reservation in government departments would be \u201cfatal\u201d to good government. Still, you went along with the Poona Pact with the assumption that in 10 years our society would have progressed far enough that the reservation system could be discarded.<\/span>\n\nWe messed up on that front, Bapu. We\u2019re still holding quotas for various posts. People are still classified as SC and OBC, and instead of it being an unfortunate marker for the socially downtrodden, it\u2019s become a desirable one. Now, we have leaders like Hardik Patel<\/a>, who demand the OBC tag for the privileged Patel community, and a ten per cent reservation for economically backward upper castes. Some people blame you for indulging Babasaheb Ambedkar in Poona and acquiescing to the reservations policy. But don\u2019t be fazed by that: Blame game has become the national sport of our country. <\/span>\n

But cheer up, Bapu. We\u2019re still naming streets after you, stamping currency with your face (we even corrected your photo on our new notes!) and what\u2019s more, we still don\u2019t drink on your birth and death anniversaries.<\/blockquote>\nBut perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, and that\u2019s just not right. After all, India is shining. Or maybe it is shining too bright and we are being blinded. Well, at least half of <\/span>Kashmir<\/span><\/a> is. Following your non-violent philosophy, we\u2019ve stopped lethal weapons and started using pellet guns up there. Sure, it has had some <\/span>side effects<\/span><\/a> but you can\u2019t say that we\u2019re not trying. <\/span>\n\nAnd yes, on the whole, we\u2019re not so much into the whole ahimsa thing now. Switch on the news, if you get any TV reception up there, and take a look. It really doesn\u2019t work. You have a nation of men killing each other over beef, women wantonly drinking, lovers unabashedly necking, artists and students being anti-national. Even standing up for the national anthem has become a matter of debate. All kinds of things that piss us off are happening every day, so we keep mobs handy. I don\u2019t know how you\u2019re going to take this Bapu, but we\u2019ve taken justice into our own hands and now feel free lynching people for all kinds of real and imagined <\/span>transgressions<\/span><\/a> and then making viral videos out of it. Yes, viral videos are new weapons that we\u2019re using to Make India Great Again. (You had President Truman in your time; we have the genius whose words I\u2019m paraphrasing here.)<\/span>\n\nI can sense that you disagree with the way things are unfolding, Bapu, but really it is a whole new world now. Why, even Nathuram Godse is celebrated as a hero today. The ideology of the outfit of which he was a part has started to influence public life. <\/span>\n\nBut cheer up, Bapu. We\u2019re still naming streets after you, stamping currency with your face (we even corrected<\/a> your photo on our new notes!) and what\u2019s more, we still don\u2019t drink on your birth and death anniversaries. For this generation, that\u2019s like giving up salt. And in the ultimate tribute, as we put all anti-national elements on a train to Pakistan, we\u2019re practically giving your Quit India movement a sequel!<\/span>\n\nAnyway, I\u2019ll end this letter now. You keep paying attention to our country and you might even be lucky enough to see our PM announce one of his new schemes. Maybe one of them will be the Pradhan Mantri (Gau Raksha Peedit) Suraksha Yojana. Until then, Jai Hind.<\/span>\n\nThis is an updated version of an earlier published story.<\/em>\n\n\u00a0\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Bapu, 71 years after your assassination, I find people questioning your legacy. We\u2019ve lost the plot on ahimsa, but at least we still observe dry days in your name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Open Letter to the Father of the Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dear Bapu, 71 years after your assassination, I find people questioning your legacy. 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