NATIONALITY – HERO WORSHIPING V/s. Humanity in the Human Pageant:

NATIONALITY – HERO WORSHIPING V/s. Humanity in the Human Pageant:

Often I have felt that the purpose of writing these posts is to help myself remember the truth of life and its virtues that I so often forget. There are so many great men and women born on this earth. Many are now worshiped as god. Take for example Ram or Krishna or Buddha or Christ for example. These were just mortal men like us. But they are worshiped because of beautiful thought provoking messages they have conveyed.

One problem with worshipping is glory and that magnificent light that surrounds these men of substance. Light and glory are good. But the side effect is blurring of the message that these men of substance sought to convey. So here is an idol we have. The idol is beautiful. It is serene and we must enjoy worshiping the idol. But in the meanwhile, the message that the man Krishna or Ram or Buddha or Christ wanted to give gets lost. Then remains the form; a form so thoughtless, so empty. There are hundreds of Bhaktas – the devotees. These devotees pile up and line up. These devotees are full of e motions. They are full of Bhakti. But the thoughts are lost. The message is lost. So we have devotees of lot of religion and dharmas doing things exactly opposite to what their heroes taught them to do. For example Jains practice fasting. Fasting perhaps may have a purpose of “Atma Suddhi”. The cleansing of soul. But then that should entail with it lot of forgiveness and mental peace. But that is not the case. Fast then become a ritual. Fasting now is a religious ceremony. It is performed without any intention of “Atma Suddhi”. The thoughts do not change. Thoughts remain self-same. There is so much of disgruntled feeling. And fasting adds to that irritability. The purpose is lost. Religion survives. God dies.

When I was in school – long back, we were taught songs of Patriotism. It was a feeling of India V/s. World. We were taught of the long standing freedom struggle that we have undertaken as a nation. There were men and women of substance who laid their lives for us. We sang songs about Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and lot of other heroes. There was a feeling of nationality particularly being a grandson of a freedom-fighter who never claimed any pension from government. As age advanced, as knowledge of world, economy, polity increased; these feelings changed.

Slowly but steadily there came a feeling of lack of national oneness. Here was not a nation – but a group of people who were using the emotions of thousands of people. This group of people was shrewd. It was essentially power and money game and nothing more. Post 1991 – in the liberalized economy, I was a strong patron of Narasimha Rao – then Prime Minister. The pathetic government managed institutions justified need of ushering privatization at the national platform. Perhaps basic idea was good governance and honest administration away from corruption. But after 20 years we have a Prime Minister - Dr. Manmohan Singh who looks more like a representative of the US Senate rather then the head of Indian Government. Was Rao no different?

While I write this, I do admit my affiliation and complete inclination towards the Congress Party. But so what? Do I lose my right as an individual to speak out my view? While this is true, I must say and admit that BJP will make no difference if it is in power. Rather they have better potential to make it worst. Whatever, the very idea of national leader sounds redundant? That is false and it cannot be so! Here we have no leader since leadership means unity of purpose. Are we heading towards any purpose? I have serious doubts. It is just a corporate business that we are into. A corporate business!

At the party level, I have felt that there is hero worshiping. We all have leaders. The local leaders have state level affiliations and state leaders have national level affiliations. There is a gang. The purpose of gang is to accumulate power; to get into positions by using all means. This is just not true for one political party but true across the board.

Same is the case with personal lives of people. Here we have heroes like Ram or Krishna. More then these heroes we have agents who proclaim peace and prosperity in our lives. These agents claim to know God. They claim to have ability to help us go closer to God. I do not know about people or the devotees, but the god-men or heads of religious institution definitely improve their quality of life. They get into better bargaining powers with the government and with everybody around them. They muster wealth beyond imagination and live luxuries that are unknown to most of those living on this earth. All this goes on in the name of God. Poor God! He has permitting these God men to rule us in His name. And now God must wait for all the communities to get sufficiently aware so to thwart these religious leaders from doing further loss. And what a fine business is religion. In India all income by religious institution is tax free. Does not this sound like a great business? Well – it is.

I was reading Einstein’s Book – “The world as I see it”. Although the original version where he may have written relativity is beyond my intellectual comprehension which I must admit, but there are sections that are just great.

These sections reflect what a man of depth Einstein must have been. On his ideas of patriotism, Einstein writes and I quote from his book:

“…This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed.

Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism--how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press…”

EXPERIENCE WITH BHART SANCHAR NIGAM LIMITED – THE TALE OF INDIAN BUREAUCRACY:

Many a times little incidences teach us a lot. These incidences are little because of the Value attached to them. Value could be financial value or value in terms of importance in daily life.

We live in India that harps of magnificent progress. Our country is amazing. Its political leaders foresee India as a global super power when in fact we have millions of our brothers in villages starving and hundreds of farmers committing suicide. However, with a section of our people in India, talking adversely about our country is a sin. So taking that sin in my account of life, I am narrating one experience that I recently had with telephone department of our nation. The BSNL – although now autonomous is not private. It happens to be part of the government organizations in India.

With on set of monsoons many of those who live in India or have lived in India know that phones go dead. One such incidence happened with one of our land line numbers.

So how do you get the line to work back? Call up the complaint division. Some technician comes from the company; repairs the phone. Is it over?

No. BSNL does not work that way.

The BSNL phone line was completely dead – it did not function. Routine complaint number for BSNL is 198. Years back when machines were not in vogue, people – I mean human beings used to pick up 198. So you could call up the complaint number and speak to the individual on the other side. With greater technology, greater problems have visited BSNL. The leaders of BSNL have replaced human operator with machine operator. Calling 198 now is a nightmare. The machine first of all picks up the phone and it gives you multiple options of languages that you may want to choose from. Once the redundant exercise is over, it simple gives you hell lot of options regarding your complaint. This way the roller coaster ride begins and the consumer is asked to dial the area code and then the phone number and such stuff. By the end of it, when you are looking forward for receiving your complaint number the machine hangs the phone in between. If you try again, same thing happens. Try again – no difference.

So our people tried the complaint number and all bombed. There was nobody to register the complaint. Somehow our old diaries have had some alternative complaint numbers. So we tried those numbers. Those numbers too were not available. They were busy. We assigned the Herculean task of lodging the complaint to one of us who was trying to get the complaint numbers. But the numbers were busy for as long as 10 hours.

Since we did not find access to complaint numbers, we called up another number that belonged to the supervisor. When the supervisor was called, he refused to accept that the BSNL numbers could be dysfunctional. Well – we did not have hobby of passing time. May be supervisors did not understand this. The supervisor somehow said that try the number again and you will get it. He sounded confident. After 5-10 minutes, the complaint phone number (alternative number) was available with the operator on line! Oh! Great. At least we heard a human voice from the complaint resolution department (I don’t know if they have such a department at all). We felt that supervisor had a switch and once the switch was pressed on – the complaint receiving phone number started accepting phones. The complaint was lodged. A complaint number was given. We thought that the matter would get settled and solved within a day. Next day a line man (guy who repairs phone lines) came. He examined the lines. He said the line is okay but there was some water in the wall socket that was causing the problem. He had cleaned the water. His assurance that “the matter will get solved” turned wrong. Next day the phone was not working. Once again another complaint was lodged. The line man came next and this time he identified fault with a devise called “splitter”. He said the splitter needs to be changed. We said okay – do it. The line man smiled and said BSNL does not supply splitters. So it’s like going to barber and the barber says go and get scissors from market and I will cut your hair. From our office, phone was made to the immediate supervisor of lineman. They call it Junior Telephone Officer. That guy happily informed that lineman was right. He added that they were honest and he did not want people to accuse him of selling BSNL instruments that were given for free. He felt BSNL was corruption free organization in India. Ultimately we had to send somebody to the market at a place suggested by the BSNL guy to get splitter. Another one day passed and the lineman came to change the splitter. He changed the splitter. The problem still continued. By this time, we had lodged almost about 5-6 complaints with BSNL.

Since the matter did not get resolved once again the line man came and this time, he said that exercise of changing splitter was not necessary but that our internal wiring of phone lines was defective and needed a change. He asked us to change the concealed line wiring. Since the lineman had gone wrong twice, this time we had little reason to believe what he said. Therefore more then a trouble with phone line we felt there was a trouble with his intentions. Therefore, we lodged complaint with the General Manager and the Manager of the City explaining the array of events that had taken place. A copy was marked to our legal section, to take up the matter with court, if needed. The seniors happened to be good. Therefore, they sent the divisional engineer next day to examine and solve the problem. The divisional engineer came and it took 15 minutes to solve the problem that had taken more then 10 days of waiting time, 12-15 complaints and more then 4 calls to the supervisors.

This is a way our bureaucracy functions. Recently a Minister’s wife had lost a purse at the train station containing 40000 INR and some credit cards. Within 7 days the police – cops got the purse back. But there are thousands of mothers whose daughters have got lost to be pushed to brothels. There are thousands of children who get lost and their limbs are cut off so that they can be made to beg on roads. Our police are not able to find them. Our police can hit sticks to mobs, fire tear gas on assembly of people who assemble peacefully, but they cannot fight terrorist or detect bombs. We must seek permission from police to assemble peacefully!!!! What a nation we are building up? Good heavens, there are some like Anna Hazare or Arvind Kejriwal who are born as anomaly in this nation. For rest of us, it is a routine business… who cares?

We feel that we are living in a country whose officers have powers without answerability. Bribe is an rooted culture here. It starts from the first day we visit temple. We give gifts to God to do us favors more then our symbol of love. The culture of bribery comes by birth. I do not know, if we will ever get rid of the spoilage we have created. But the little incidence of BSNL was amusing particularly in case of a phone line that was of little use to us!