There have been massive intelligence failures too. But what has been painful to nationalists is how the government is using the sweet politics of ‘moderation’, goodwill and patience towards mobsters. The police want to contain violence by being beaten up rather than showing the right force. Yesterday, the govt went so far as to visit the hospital and meet with Wangchuk, who extracted an unfair promise from the govt, telling them not to register any case against hooligans. The government happily agreed. They requested that Wangchuk tell his mobs not to commit violence. What is this?! The govt is petitioning and begging these anti-nationals and miscreants to stop violence?
The government OWNS law and order and it seems to have forgotten that it is the ruler and not the ruled. What a sorry psychological defeat this is. Each protest in the past that has disrupted the nation has been dealt with incompetence, repeatedly. When the Opposition parties ruled in the past, they could disrupt the heaviest of the mobs in just one day. I must say that the Asura/Titan no doubt carries in him much professionalism and discipline, even if they be malicious actions, and his show of force and strength is simply amazing. One can even see it in the Toolkit documents, extraordinarily well-carried-out mass protest methods and clear instructions. No idea when the god-lovers and nation-lovers will learn to have the similar strength and clarity of a Titan.
Is this the Achilles heel of us Hindus as well as our Hindu leaders – the politics of moderation? This damn sentiment of Ahimsa all the time? Sri Aurobindo detested the moderates. Sri Aurobindo detested their petitioning. He urged them to renounce it because the times demanded so. I see the same being played out now with the current government.
I quite understand this. But behind all this, there is a realpolitik going on. There is a time to wait and prepare, and a time to strike. The government is buying time while it is discovering the Achilles heel of all involved. Surely the government has its own Achilles heel, which strangely is being saved by the protesters, perhaps unwittingly. Recently, there were serious questions raised about the cutting off of the qualifying marks for certain castes, creating quite a bit of understandable anger and confusion. It has further marginalised the capable meritorious students. But perhaps these students didn’t much agitate. Being intelligent, they started looking for alternate options, of which settling abroad and studying in universities outside comes to them as a natural option. They take the easier route and end up doing well. But then the nation gets deprived and drained of the best talent. This is the worst demon, the demon of caste-based reservation in professional colleges, a Frankenstein towards which none has cared or dared to look. A bold step, as you suggest, can be taken only by those who are clear in their conscience, truthful and honest in their dealings, which no political party or government in India has had so far. I may add that so long as the governments (this one or that one) continue to honour Gandhi as a saviour and don’t bring Sri Krishna and Sri Aurobindo into the mainstream of the political discourse, keeping the Gita only for oath in the courts, we cannot expect anything more.
That is why The Mother and Sri Aurobindo gave us quite a different and unique solution, one that bypasses the governments and their party politics.
‘This is the situation. It has grown considerably worse since the last war; it grows worse year by year, and one finds oneself in such a ridiculous situation that, unfortunately, as one is at the end of one’s resources, to simplify what has been made so complicated, there is an idea in the earth-atmosphere—an idea which might be called preposterous, but unhappily it is much worse than preposterous, it is catastrophic—the idea that if there were a great upheaval, perhaps it would be better afterwards…. One is so jammed between prohibitions, impossibilities, interdictions, rules, the complications of every second, that one feels stifled and really gets the admirable idea that if everything were demolished perhaps it would be better afterwards!…. It is in the air. And all the governments have put themselves in such impossible conditions; they have become so tied up that it seems to them they will have to break everything to be able to move forward…. (Silence) This is unfortunately a little more than a possibility, it is a very serious threat. And it is not quite certain that life will not be made still more impossible because one feels incapable of emerging from the chaos—the chaos of complications—in which humanity has put itself. It is like the shadow—but unfortunately a very active shadow—of the new hope which has sprung up in the human consciousness, a hope and a need for something more harmonious; and the need becomes so much more acute as life, as it is at present organised, becomes more and more contrary to it. The two opposites are facing each other with such intensity that one can expect something like an explosion….
(Silence)
This is the condition of the earth, and it is not very bright. But for us one possibility remains—I have spoken about it to you several times already—even if, outside, things are deteriorating completely and the catastrophe cannot possibly be avoided, there remains for us, I mean those for whom the supramental life is not a vain dream, those who have faith in its reality and the aspiration to realise it—I don’t necessarily mean those who have gathered here in Pondicherry, in the Ashram, but those who have as a link between them the knowledge Sri Aurobindo has given and the will to live according to that knowledge—there remains for them the possibility of intensifying their aspiration, their will, their effort, to gather their energies together and shorten the time for the realisation. There remains for them the possibility of working this miracle—individually and to a small extent collectively—of conquering space, duration, the time needed for this realisation; of replacing time by intensity of effort and going fast enough and far enough in the realisation to liberate themselves from the consequences of the present condition of the world; of making such a concentration of force, strength, light, truth, that by this very realisation they can be above these consequences and secure against them, enjoy the protection bestowed by the Light and Truth, by Purity—the divine Purity through the inner transformation—and that the storm may pass over the world without being able to destroy this great hope of the near future; that the tempest may not sweep away this beginning of realisation.
Instead of falling asleep in an easy quietude and letting things happen according to their own rhythm, if one strains to the utmost one’s will, ardour, aspiration and springs up into the light, then one can hold one’s head higher; one can have, in a higher region of consciousness, enough room to live, to breathe, to grow and develop above the passing cyclone.’
The Mother: CWM 9 (7 August 1957)
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-august-1957#p14)
Affectionately
Alok Da
