Politics in India is complicated business owing to the nation's diversity in language, culture, heritage, legacy, cuisine, art forms, regional ideologies, caste systems and many more..... Politicians who are serious about staying on course should not encourage any form of division based on language and other aspects that give uniqueness to each one of us. It was indeed a huge blunder committed by our leaders in the past to draw the geographical boundaries of our Republic using languages as a parameter. In the recent past we have witnessed several protests and unrest in states including Karnataka and Tamilnadu over claims of language superiority and exclusivity.
As a person whose mother tongue is Telugu, a language studied throughout my schooling, claim reasonable fluency in speaking, writing and reading Hindi and Tamil languages, such protests and claims of language superiority gives a sense of unsettling. There are instances when people have killed one another over languages without taking pride in our cultural diversity. Myopic politicians believe they can garner votes by claiming to earn recognition for their state language on a national platform and some political parties have built their cadre on language superiority. Sometimes it is funny to watch some political leaders claiming superiority of the Tamil language, when they have ignored the plight of Tamil speaking Sri Lankans living in the refugee camps for decades on with no respite with their pleas for citizenship ignored.
There is a huge section of Tamil speaking population that has made other states their home. Have the political outfits that vociferously claim to protect the interests of Tamil speaking population been able to help the cause of Eelam that was encouraged and promoted by them? Have we been proactive in ensuring the implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution? We have very little answers to problems that are complex and tackled at the national level. Intellectuals have visited Chennai to seek help with the implementation of the 13th Amendment only to be sidelined for selfish reasons and political greed. Our state is fully answerable to the Tamil Diaspora that hoped to find solutions to their ethnic conflict. Eelam is not about LTTE; LTTE was not the only solution to the cause. It was made a scapegoat for our helplessness and political failure on the issue.
Why are governments hesitant to initiate concrete steps to assimilate those who have fled the war and repression into our mainstream society. Is it okay for a business group from one state to own a cricket team representing another state that consists of players from almost all states? Hypocrisy and tokenism are part of today's politics and it requires a change of thought process to serve the society in a better manner.
India needs to revamp its rules to recognize political parties and de-recognize parties that name their party based on language or conduct their political affairs with claims to raise the status of one particular caste or community. Progress needs to be uniform with no state boundaries or borders for the nation to grow as a global power.
On a different note, the recent news item of naming an auditorium at a medical college campus after a student who committed suicide over having failed in an national entrance exam is a moral paradox. With due respect to those who decided to name the auditorium after her some issues should not be politicized without understanding the implications of such actions. Suicide is not an act of bravery and does not amount to martyrdom that can be lauded by those with huge responsibilities towards society. Suicidal thoughts need intervention and help and there should be no memorials who end their life causing life long misery to families they leave behind.
I wish to quote here a similar political hypocrisy on patriotism. When I visited the Golden Temple at Amritsar, I refused to visit the Jallianwala Bagh because I did not wish to see the bullet marks on the walls. I believe it was abject politics to "renovate" a place of horror and create a memorial for the right reasons. It should have been preserved for future generations to understand the streak of patriotic fervor among those who died for our nation. This just goes to show that we as a nation are not really good at preserving and accepting our nation's history in 'as it were' condition, but we seem to be at our best to help those who wish to distort history for political mileage.
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