Sickularism could be sticking to the point why days after receiving Padmashri award, she should have said that the freedom in 1947 came as a ‘bheek’, alms something given in charity.
True, a flamboyant actress-turned-social media activist Kangana Ranaut again courts controversies but some of her questions are really worth debating!
By focusing on Jawahar Nehru’s brighter spots and virtues – including knowledge of English, good rapport with Britons like Lord Mountbatten to Sir Stafford Cripps and later his role in stewarding free India, scholars have only judged him softly with kid gloves; and did it deliberately.
To start with, like many political stars and others, Kangana has a set of ‘enemies’ – perhaps more because along with a political class, she also took on some established ‘sacred cows’ in Bollywood head on.
The joker class was used to being fed, nurtured and well promoted by nepotism. The select media enjoyed toeing the established line – take a fag and a sip at a freebies dinner and spew out: “what is there in journalism yaar, Modi is so ….Amit Shah’s English is so poor”… and so on.
Well, select amnesia could be a virtue with some ‘politically correct class’ and their so-called intellectual journos and ‘TV anchors’. These anchors are also of typical variety!
‘Nothing doing….etc etc ….
The essential problem with this class is ‘psychological’. They seemed to have lost balance – the ‘balance’ of reasoning!
Why?
One reason is right from 2002 – they thought the punching bag they had created in Gujarat would not make much headway. Sadly for them, Namo became PM of India with a decisive mandate.
Getting it on their nose made them angry foxes!
And yet again, notwithstanding the playing of desi and videshi ‘jhun-jjhuna’ of mob lynching, etc etc – Modi returned to power in 2019. So they do not know what to do with their ‘wisdom’!
Sometimes they run to Kolkata for ‘aapa’ glorify era…. and then to ‘Kerala Model’ and the moment Covid figures jump in the southern state, they say ‘Pegasus virus’ is worse than Corono. Incidentally, that virus also came from Wuhan.
Imagine, Wuhan was somewhere in Maharashtra near the ‘orange belt’ !
Then again, look at the other side. They decided – the so-called ‘Kerala model’ has been successful in fighting Covid, so it ought to be hailed !
They decided – UPA-1 was virtuous, so it ought to be agreed, because they ‘extended’ outside support.
The only good contribution of UPA-1 was NREGA – digging wells in the 21st century and cash-money flowed.
There was also a NGO raj – again the so-called ‘National Advisory Council’.
In the meantime, in Chennai, there is an ‘intellectual’ – who should carry the Red Flag shamelessly.
The intellectual did not mind putting brave Air Force fighter-pilot Abhinandan’s life at risk. The paper once hailed the Indo-US Nuke deal, and then made a somersault that even Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci could not.
Romania was incidentally once communist-ruled!
Coming back to Kangana and the story of India’s independence, Well, 1947 represents a harsh reality. India attained ‘political liberation’ but there was a spin. The historical spin – a fixed ideology and a political concept and a dynasty/leadership was imposed on India.
A further spin was tried to push an idea that partition was inevitable.
Some steps and chronology appear well charted to conspiracy to make one particular set of leaders and one or two leaders – the guiding force. And India made tryst with ‘blunders’ in Kashmir and in many other areas including China front.
The 1962 was the ultimate shocker from a paragon of virtues – who for long could not be criticized, at least according to Sickulars.
But at every stage – a deliberate plot or strategy was ensured to ensure the political interest of a particular family is safe guarded and promoted.
Even the supposedly an authentic book – also written in a lucid style – ‘Freedom at Midnight’ (first published in 1975) penned by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre – in fact smacks of concerted efforts to glorify the role of Mountbatten and the British Raj.
“… nationalism rose so did right wing… but why it died a sudden death? And why Gandhi let Bhagat Singh die… why Netaji Bose was killed and never got Gandhi ji’s support? why line of partition was drawn by a white man… ?instead of celebrating freedom why Indians killed each other, some of the answers I am seeking please help me find answers (sic),” Kangana Ranaut says.
I had met Lapierre in January 2009 in Delhi; and when some of us asked him to respond to criticism that the book almost glorified the colonial masters, he did not deny!
Among other things, Kangana says, the British had looted India to the “point of saturation”.
Even Shashi Tharoor had said so.
