Fiberakht

Summer is here and temperatures are going up – the Sun seems to shine much more radiantly than any time of the year and outdoor sport is now a less attractive offering. Though IPL has just commenced and cricket happens to be my favourite sport, another sport is fast challenging the numero uno status it holds in my life especially with the soaring celsius count outside. This sport is called 'Fiberakht' or simply ‘Fiberals vs Bhakts’ – the so affectionate monikers either side has bestowed lovingly on the other. Ideally, it should have been the age old ‘Liberals vs Conservatives’ but times change and so should we. The more I engage in this sport, the more I am reminded of an approximate nineteen minute TED talk by psychologist Jonathan Haidt titled ‘The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives’; the more I am reminded of it, the more I tend to enjoy this sport of 'Fiberakht' - going after the fiberals, seeing them frothing and also getting insulted in this process yourself has an intoxicating charm to itself. Fun apart, Haidt’s talk is where I would like to focus as I move through this blog trying to connect it to Bhaaratiya values and the environment currently.

In the recent few months, a few co-Bhakts and/or co-Bhaaratiyas of mine have expressed their concern or anger or uneasiness on a whole host of events associated with the ruling dispensation. Some expressions of these emotions have also included the suffocation they feel at times for voicing out their thought. Let us visit that first by directly shifting attention to a few inquiries:

1. Is the Modi-Shah led BJP gold dust and an image of perfection – of course not!
2. Are there operational hiccups there – of course yes, who does not have?

3. Have louts been associated with the party – yes, they have; but louts have their value when it comes to dealing with other louts. Also, compromises are a part of life.

4. Is there an alternative – NO! Under the whole blazing Sun, NO; the binomial theory speaks of choices that any entity has in front of itself; selection of one choice is equivalent to the automatic rejection of the other and a rejection of one choice is an automatic selection of the one left. The beautiful concept of multi-verses also speaks about branching possibilities in an endless web of choices spanning across space-time. The ones who have seen Nicholas Cage’s Next would surely find the binomial theory a fascinating concept. Those who would find it fascinating would also know its potential to directly establish causality in indirect moves - read NOTA or voting without a thorough pro-con analysis.

Jonathan Haidt in his TED talk speaks of the five moral roots or channels that define a person’s moral toolbox or value system. If you would have checked out this video, you would have seen him arguing about how Liberals and Conservatives have fairly similar opinions on two of the five roots (i.e. Harm-Care and Fairness-Reciprocity) but have an extremely high variation in how they perceive the other three roots (i.e. Authority-Respect, In-group Loyalty and Purity-Sanctity) based on his studies across various geographies and data sets:

He goes on to make a highly appealing point that since all the five moral channels are clustered fairly together for the Conservatives as against the wide variance for the Liberals, more often than not, the former tend to have much lesser biased opinions and tend to make much more balanced decisions as compared to the latter because they use all the five tools in their tool kit when they analyze an event in front of them. These observations then shape the sport of 'Fiberakht'; the sport had begun at ‘Liberals vs Conservatives’ and then we receive some lies, few false accusations and decades of bigotry towards Bhaaratiya values and teachings leading to a hardened mass of Conservatives who have been thinking for very long about their so called oppressive crimes against free thought. The more they hardened the more they consolidated and stood behind a man who gave them hope of change; they believed that this man would establish dharma (dharayati iti dharma). That which holds (together) is dharma. An approximate English equivalent is duty or responsibility coupled with righteousness. In the wider context, we can speak of that which holds together the society or the nation or the culture but it can also be seen at an individual level or microscopic level through the following examples:

1. Matrudharma is the duty of a mother to nourish the relationship with her child and to enable the kid to bloom from sapling to Vatavruksha enriching the environment and all that the child eventually comes in contact with.
2. Bandhudharma is the duty of a brother to hold together the bonding between siblings and enable the mutual and complimentary growth of the ones in the relationship - the silent guardian and the watchful protector!
3. Nagarikdharma is the duty of the citizen towards his/her nation – it is his/her responsibility to contribute to a well-knit society. It is the responsibility of nation building by discharging all the civic duties through good conduct on the roads/offices/homes and outside, by fair & regular payment of tax and the spreading of spiritual positivity.
4. Raajdharma is the duty of the King or the leader to stitch together & preserve the fabric of his kingdom just as the beads of a necklace are held together by the thin thread that gently moves through the beads - to provide the necklace its exquisite characteristics and joy to the bearer.

The foundation of a society based on dharma is fairly simple - with all its constituents practicing their respective dharma, the need for a rights based society turns null and void. Since every constituent of the society is aware, we have fairly ensured that all rights stand protected without asking for them. This is what the Arthashastra envisions and advocates - a King should establish the reign of dharma and the other facets move into their place as smoothly as a well oiled sliding door. If the demand for rights evaporates, the very existence of Liberals stands threatened since all the arguments, rallies and movements of this bunch of intellectuals is based on an unquenchable thirst for more and more freedom - freedom of action and freedom from consequences of those actions; in Marathi, we represent that by स्वराज्य असो ,स्वैराचार नव्हे .The more the Liberal side sensed this steady resurgence of Indic values, especially since the year 2014, along with the drop-by-drop mainstreaming of our rich heritage of Sanskrit literature and the ever awakening sea of consciousness, they morphed into ‘Fiberals’ and we telegraphed into ‘Bhakts’ destined to play the game of Fiberakht for the foreseeable future.

If I join together Haidt’s wonderful arguments and the concept of dharma then I am left to ponder on a pretty decisive question - can the fiberal elite who do not value the three moral roots of Authority-Respect, Loyalty and Sanctity ever be honest to a nation’s cause? For years together we have allowed the fiberals to run amok – they have belittled our values, our culture and our thoughts and replaced or re-conditioned us to believe Macaulay’s devious designs. They have tried very hard to usurp the accolades while trying to portray us as some tree hopping, faeces flinging, war mongering chimps and here we are still challenging their fortresses. For years together, they have buried the greatness, the compassion, the love, the equipoise, the dynamism and the rudraavatar of the eternal Shiva this culture represents – can we allow that to continue? I am seeing a great fightback on social media and on the ground running where the fiberal masks of liberty, hiding deep bigotry towards the less sophisticated, less earning, less privileged and different-than-them citizens of this wonderful nation, are being torn apart and the true face of hypocrisy exposed like never before.

The moment of reckoning would soon dawn upon us, my fellow Bhaaratiyas and co-Bhakts! We are just a year away from it. In January of this calendar year, I had expressed how these fiberals will be bonding together to address their existential crisis through my blog The Ecosystem and its Existential Crisis – they would do all that is needed to destabilize this nation’s peace and inject fear in the hope that it results in panic & chaos which would ultimately lead to erroneous decisions being made by the civilian mass – they did just that and more with Bhima-Koregaon, Farmer March, Lingayat divide, Dalit protests etc. They will continue to use masks; they will continue to use rational causes as their shields and fire under that protection by mixing anti-social elements in the congregation backed with a horde of social media warriors (willingly or otherwise) who would mock and question you over each event trying to create doubts in your minds:

They will question your neeti or morality and I pray you answer them like Raam answered Vaali: when Vaali questioned Raam’s neeti after the latter shot him in the back during the former’s battle with Sugreeva, Raam replied, “There is no neeti for the anaitik.”

They will question your inclusiveness & respect towards different thoughts & living beings - and I pray your fire back the eternal Bhaaratiya teaching of Sarveh Bhavantu Sukhinaha, Sarveh Santu Niramaya, Sarveh Bhadraani Paschantu, Maa Kaschit Dukha bhag Bhavet – and it’s wide practice through NaMo’s policies!

They will demean & demoralize you; I pray you shine the glory of Asato Maa Sadgamaya, Tamaso Maa Jyotirgamaya, Mrutyormaa Amritamgamaya!

They will gang up and have their group laughter therapy sessions with you their topic at hand – you continue to believe in Sanghatan!

If nothing works, they would play the victim card; I pray you answer them with the emphatic  Thagashi Thaga from the playbook of Chanakya & Shivaji Maharaj.

We see how these fiberals are shameless in their hypocritical defenses of lofty superiority complex inflated cognitive dissonances – that is what we need to learn from them! We need to get doubly shameless while dealing with them and still keep our moral compass intact to question our own leaders for their follies & offer them the constructive criticism and help to rectify, rebuild, redesign and reclaim – because you know, we have an inner conscience! The harshest of criticism against the Centre & BJP comes from the RW – Swarajya or Shakhanaad are prime examples. The fiberals will rant today about ‘democracy in danger’ and yet conveniently ignore how they have themselves metronomically drilled the institutions of democracy hollow through their policies & selfishness. They will fail to acknowledge democracy when the supposed transgressors of the same allow hate mongrels to continue talking trash via mediums available across the country. (Not only presstitutes like Barkha, Rajdeep, Sagarika or social voices like Prakash Raj or ‘student’ leaders like Khalid & Kanhaiyya or ‘intellectuals’ like Guha or De or Amartya Sen; but also home grown turncoats like Shatrughna, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie). If that is not democracy and tolerance, then maybe we need to learn about it from Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping! Their over-excitement and desperation is tell-all and the battle is going to be worth it. If the conversion of liberal to fiberal ever cedes (akin to the genius Potato to Gold) then we can once again welcome our liberal brothers and sisters - for their education & intellect can be of great use to nation building, if not, so be it – we walk without them by our side.

I had quite some time back in one of my earlier blogs, titled Of Truth and Terror, said that Narendra Modi has chosen to stand by Maa Bhaarti, we have to choose, as her children, whether we are standing by the fakir karma yogi or not! I feel a strange kind of calmness or inner peace (as Master Shifu would put it) when I say this – I am very sure that year 2019 would answer a very prominent question – what does our nation deserve? It will get what it deserves.

I sign off the blog with one of Bhagawan Shri Krishna’s many transcendent sagely words:

Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitaha

(dharma will protect the one who protects dharma)

Keep Fighting….

Live Free….

Jai Hind!