Moralising ‘Unmoral’ Stand Of 20 Year Old Girl

Gurmehar Kaur

India , as a country, seems to be under terrific confusion, while entire media and Govt. talks about a statement related to a war between Pakistan and India , where to place the same in the matrix of morality.  What Gurmaher talked was – ‘ Pakistan did not kill India but war has’ . This is an important statement pertaining to international geographical politics crossed with imperialistic cupidity.

Pakistan is a neighbour keeps bickering with India at its borders and so India with Pakistan at the borders. Inciting inter-country violence is part of cheap tactics followed by almost all the countries with their neighbours and economic rivals not just specific to India but world-wide. The wrangling at the border is not uncommon in the world and it is not just specific to India alone. Pakistan’s army faces a continuous friction with its another Islamic neighbour, Afghanistan too. The Durand Line Agreement which marks the borders have been one of the centric points of contention between those two countries. The statement of Gurmehar talks about incessant enmity between two countries viz. India and Paksitan. Her father could have been deployed at China – India border where frequent violations happen and could have died there, having not exercised any of his options, nor been given any option, to fight war only with Pakistan, being the country’s army man. Today’s Indian army fights with Chattisgarh Tribals and North East rebellions too. The friction faced by army has no choice of its own.

The international border politics are wrongly implanted in India’s conscience. The moral box has been given a shape and form to fit everything into it for a test. Of course, there has been a back drop for friction between India and Pakistan since independence on various cross-over issues. But that does not make army to choose one worst enemy out of many, rather there are no strict benchmarks , of any kind, to classify who is worst enemy other than that related to economic interests, observed historically at global level.

The foundation for wrong political understanding was laid down by Gandhi with his spiritual concoction with the freedom fight. Gandhi , in the name of non-violence, showed a way how to strike an intelligent compromise with State and gave a diplomatic touch to freedom fight. The pressure to give away freedom was clear in the beginning of the century itself and British openly promulgated its intention and that was the time , early 1900s, we see several sects/groups forming up to bargain for their own vision of freedom in the form of Bhagat Singh, Dange, Golwalkar, Ambedkar, Jinnah etc. Gandhi mixed up unrelated things politics can live with. When he announced that partition of Pakistan is morally wrong and Ambedkar gave a retort saying ‘ Europe saw several divisions in the last 150 years for its own reasons and partition of Pakistan is neither moral or immoral but UNMORAL ‘ ( not verbatim)

The moral foundations are redundantly brought into deciding crucial questions having socio-economic realities on ground. If we observe these values and dissect why these are sought out of place, the purpose of it seems to be apparently obedience – demanding and punishment-oriented. There has been an ‘implicit social contract’ in place enumerating morals and values on which one needs to agree to live in this country. The ultimate intention for conformity with Majoritarianism is superimposing fascism within the conceived democratic frame.

Morality takes its roots in purity, honesty, impeccability and is not subject to any question of digression on material grounds of self-interest. The morals are created with a motive to remain unquestionable and general morals are meant to be in that line. If one looks through this, why do we go in tangent direction to an important issue to create morals around an unmoral question ? The moral identity of this country underwent a dramatoc change in early 2000s and any adjustment with minorities and subaltern sections is not viewed as a matter of countenance and grace to majority functioning but is considered as a social flinch.

As stated by Ambedkar, majority in this country is not a political majority but a communal ( Brahminical ) majority ( emphasis in brackets added ). During the regime of Congress, the political majority was always governed within the limits of communal majority and hence demolition of Babri Masjid was reduced to only an administrative failure and the riots on Sikhs, as aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s murder, was generally reckoned as a natural corollary of angst of majority.

The 20 yr old girl is not acceding to an argument that Pakistan , as a specific entity, has killed her father.  The non-existing violation of this myth, which someone calls as a fact, should not be a case to consider violation of moral grounds. This has been escalated as a social crime too and, in forthcoming fascist days, possibly, this could be turned out to be a law if it goes unaddressed in the system. The dramatic part of all this is more interesting. We have laid down clear provisions in the constitution. Attaching every trivial and unconnected social event to a ‘holyness’ is actually brahminical majroiatarainist mentality of idolatry.  This culture is reaffirmed when the apex institution like Supreme Court makes ‘ Janagana mana ‘ as a holy affair in the cinema halls.

Brahminical Hindutva’s modus operandi has always been institutionalizing idolatry and fixing ‘holyness’ around it to ensure the posed value system remains dogmatic taking the concernedaway from the purview of logic. This cultural philosophy has been dampening over a period of time growing with the modernization and progress of subaltern minority sections and their economic upward movement in the society. However, the lack of real spiritual strength , despite shouldering on personality development oriented individuals like Vivekananda, is not going through the layers of the society in tandem with the needed political placement.

For a moment, let us agree to a logic that tacit moral support to Pakistan would eventually weaken the spirit to fight against a fierce enemy and that would be ‘anti-national’. In such case, we cannot even go around a logic that our fight against Pakistan is at a higher level on material grounds and when did we happen to launch a cultural fight against the same. In the entire human kind history, there is no cultural propagandist war launched between any two antagonizing countries and this is happening here without the notice and declared sanction of the Government. The border fight was limited to army and would the army men share cigarette with the Pakistan army shedding the weapons, as shown in a commercial ad, for having weakened the vengeance against Pakistan ? Army is determined to serve the borders, if they are deployed there, to keep a vigil on the borders despite what is going inside the borders in India or outside India. It is an institutional mechanism to fight border enmity dispassionately only with a sole aim to protect India or any other order passed on to them. The logic to lessen the angst by portraying lesser intensity of enmity of border country is not a concern for army , at all. It is, therefore,apparently targeted to, morality and norms trying to be built up on a despotic culture but not around Pakistan, per se.Nationalism is, generally, a strong appealing sentiment for general public across the world and this being leveraged by various political parties including Communist Party of China during Mao Zedong times. The ‘they’ and ‘us’ is being totally differently and ridiculously getting defined and this country is funnily being tried to get polarized into ‘ pro-pakistan’ and ‘anti-pakistan’. For majoritarianists, Pakistan, an Islamic republic with past history of painful partition from Akhand Bharath, is a symbolic representation to Muslim minorities and hence it is non-conformist of Brahminism.

In fact, Ambedkar emphasized on constitutional morality fearing subversion of the same to administrative tactics of this brahminical State. If at all we need a morality on socio-political ground in the society, we need something like constitutional morality which has been , atleast, quite debated and tested. The concerned brahminical majority forces go over the actual constitutional morality to create ‘ parallel morality ‘ , which is distinctly absurd. One needs to be careful about this trend of superseding the constitutional morality.

When we say we need to be secular , this is not out of fond love for minorities or any subaltern sections, but we agreed to live on a harmonious fashion when the country is freed from British and specific geographical boundaries are drawn between people, who agree on set of rules of living as per the spirit of the constitution. Any social value creation would need to have a social meaning for prosperous and harmonious collective existence, while the ‘parallel morality’ mooted now is beyond logic, beyond practicality and beyond the comprehension of constitutional framework. The whole exercise to moralizing an unmoral statement of 20 year old girl does not reflect matured politics of 2 trillion dollar economy.

  • P Victor Vijay Kumar

( The writer can be reached at his mail ID [email protected] or facebook ID ‘ P V Vijay Kumar’ )

 

 

 

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