Rupa Ganguly declared she joined BJP. Declaration sounded like a series of rational quoted to legitimize her decision in the eyes of people, for whom she felt responsible and sensitive. Well said Rupa Ganguly! My adulation for you enlarges manifold. I am sure somewhere in a corner of your heart, Draupadi lives in her true spirit. The values you have spelled out (inadvertently perhaps) are of extremely Gandhian and humanist nature squirming to go vocal; alas, there is no vocal cord suiting to its notes.
You know what? That is where my heart trembles - with lurking suspicion questioning strength of my soul despite suffering all the destruction and decay. I start questioning whether I am worth discussing Gandhian values. Gandhi kept on opposing what he sensed wrong in the face of highest nobility and wickedest of authority, and it took him decades of self-grooming and toughest of sacrifices to get that steel frame of humanity embedded in his habit of thinking of people - people who are deprived, distraught and destructed. How many of us, in our prime of youth (he was not even thirty then), have the gall to take on a mass opposition of aggressively hostile crowd with a helpless wife and children travelling in the same ship which is was by a motivated design remained quarantined for weeks? Yes, I am referring to the 1897 event when he bolted out of the ship ‘Naderi’ turning down a proposal of peaceful way of self-survival by leaving the ship alone with his family in the darkness of night. He sent his family to safe hands and stayed back in the ship with other co-passengers. No, if at all he comes out, it is only with other 400 co-passengers (mainly indentured labours). He was luckily saved by a providential cover provided by Mrs. Jane Alexander, wife of the superintendent of local police. He got misunderstood and clubbed also. He barely escaped death in the hands of the same people whom he was fighting for. The streak or uncanny quirk of his destiny followed him even in India, in different cultural expressions, but with the same forbidden 'violence' that he shunned, both in precept and practice. So much so, this time it was not a club of some Ali (Mir Ali), it was a bullet fired by one Godse (Nathuram Godse); this time proverbial destiny was defeated by technology of crude anger & cruelty used. He would have perhaps been left as a dusted tomb of freak leadership, had his vision & method not emulated by a host of outsiders and glorified by the authorities he fought against. Wait a minute, let me clarify! This is how I perceived through my small window of learning.
Unfortunately, Gandhian humanism had a gory death in the mutilating hands of our caste, clan and region oriented diverse ethnocentric beliefs and behaviour. After printing our commitment to those ideals in the constitution we deified it and returned to what suited us the best in our day to day affairs. Not surprising, why our poets, writers and intellectuals got disillusioned so fast; it did not take even a decade since independence when voices of anguish, anger and ridicule started replacing the spirit of pride and perseverance. Governments came and went, leaders emerged and drowned, statistics fudged and forgotten, governance decayed yet thrived, and nothing seems to have changed the character of the mass Gandhi died for.
Madam Rupa Ganguly, your inner voice seems to be guiding you on a similar path of selfless service, but with a deeper abscess of regret that with held you from taking this decision for so long. However, there is nothing wrong. You still can make a difference or, if nothing else, go down the history as an another Sarla Devi Chaudhurani who voiced the first note of rebuttal amidst nobles of Indian National Congress threatening to establish a separate national congress for women out of sheer dejection and disillusionment. Success is like Sensex behaviour – bull or bear. As long as it sustains the accommodable figure, hopes keep surging ahead. If success followed a standard bench mark, many like Sarla Devi would have chosen ignominy. In any case, we are a democracy of dissenting voices which meekly accepts setbacks and rearranges its priority to suit its daily needs. Not that, we did not choose persons of character and resolve in our successive chances to vote, it is just that those persons were either won over by the vested interest subsequently or, got alienated from the goals while dealing with politics of power.
Your resolve and rationale sound like our national anthem that lives only in ceremonies and controversies. However, it feels nice to sing it as and when an opportunity comes. We would wait to sing it again with you, away from ceremonies, amidst ‘We the people’ that it represents. Good luck Madam Rupa Ganguly!
