Preaching Regionalism

We all have learnt a subject named 'Civics' in our school lives and seem to have not liked it much but just that we have to learn it and pass... although it used to be a subject where a lot of my friends did score some good marks and that helped them attain a good place and 'rank' in the class and eventually in the school...

But have we ever thought what it taught us and what it was all about...?

I guess not, right??

That was one subject that taught us civic sense, the values of our democracy, our rights as individuals and citizens of a free country, that we have a democratic society and that we are all aligned to achieve a common aim and that is of being "Indian".

Well that was what the subject taught us and we all mugged it up and passed the exams and then... well and then today we are all becoming a part of a phenomenon that I would call "Preaching Regionalism" than saying Preaching Secularism, etc etc...

I can elaborate this with some examples...

The best thing to have happened in India, after Independence of course, was the advent of television. We all acknowledged it with great admiration and always looked up to it to give us information that would help us in being informed, knowledgeable and in turn would come to know what's happening where. That's the time of the old news channels and a few soaps that used to flood the prime-time... But what has happened now? Let's see...

There are shows which have encouraged the youth of the country to showcase their talents, become famous, be recognised for what they are, have allowed them to take up their hobbies as profession and they have done real good... But then something happened... We started taking things to a different level. We made the shows involve the common public, who would in-turn be the decision makers, than the intelligent and esteemed judges who sit in the panel and give their verdicts... Well it's still ok. I mean the public liked it, but it had a catch and that was that the contestants were to ask for votes (I'd rather say 'beg') and then it went to such an extent that the anchor and the contestant, both, started asking the local regional public to give the votes, just because the person was from a particular state or region. Moreso, the poor participant, in all his ignorance, would go on to speak in his native tongue, which the remaining Indians would't understand, and ask, sorry beg, for the votes... We gave way to becoming narrow from the widened vision of one nation-one community-one India...

Then we have the political parties which bank on the minorities for their vote banks and hence create their small little regional ideologies. Although they portray that they are working for the cause of the nation and that this would indeed help the minorities come up and rub shoulders with the erstwhile 'upper-class' strata of the society, but they do this by first telling people that 'you are so-and-so caste, so-and-so community' and then is when they get the votes. End of the day, the guy who represents them never turns up to his constituency.

The recent happenings in Mumbai, triggered by again a political motive, to show that Mumbaikars or Maharashtrians are not able to get jobs, etc. was again a game being played on the minds of poor and ignorant people so that they will start disliking their own country-men and would, in-tun, force them to move out of the city and eventually their state. "Their state", lol... Still they were successful in doing this (with the efforts of the gooonda's who would trigger such a thought and action and then just dwindle away in the mist of all the hoopla...). Then we have the erstwhile water problem between Karanataka and Tamil Nadu, which leads to such an extent that governments are formed baded on this issue. People kill each other if they come to know they are from this (or that) state. God help us!!

Look at UP, the once 2nd largest state and the largest in terms of population (man-power) and Bihar are all drowned because of these. People just hate their own country-men because they come from a different place, region, etc. and also some have an air that they are superior to the others too... Just gr8 isn't it to watch someone burry the feelings of a particular person just because he is unable to communicate his feelings properly or has a different accent for a language that you and he can understand... We all laugh when this happens, isn't it. But haev we ever thought how good are we? How good are we when it comes to talking in a particular situation, carrying ourselves or behaving to situations...? All because we have this thing that we come from a particular region we are the best and the others are nothing isn't going to solve the problems of poverty, unemployment, poor health services, transport, etc...

I just hope that we all just try to be normal individuals, do things that we should be doing by putting in the elements of reasoning, sanity, logic, and be transparent of the fact that the person in front of us is a xxx or yyy or zzz community or region person but is a just another of the millions, sorry billions, of my countrymen!!

Hail the notion of One India and say that we are all Indians than I am a gujarati, bengali, maharashtrian, tamilian, up'ite, etc etc...

There is a teaching in the movie Chak De India! when Shahrukh says that this is the selection for the Indian Womens' Hockey team and not a Chandigarh team... :-)

Take care and veto all my countrymen!!!

Long live India!!!

mera jahan...!!!