The Varanasi Blast

I could not imagine myself ranting about a blast that apparently blew up the Ganga-aarti on Sitala Ghat in Varanasi about which I was going gaga even a week ago. Today’s newspaper headline left me practically paralyzed. Who engineered the blast is not important to me, but what plagues me is the utter intolerance that is prevailing unmitigated in our country. The papers are juxtaposing the 2006 blast in Varanasi and the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition with yesterday’s terrorist attack in order to place this blast in history. Such an attempt is a painful reminder of several unspeakable incidents of communal violence that have torned our country asunder and have left deep incurable scars on our souls. No communal violence can be treated as an isolated affair; and I am inevitably reminded of Paul R. Brass who observes: “It is not possible to develop a casual theory of ethnic riots separate from the discusses which encompass them free from the pressures of the prevailing ideologies and social scientific paradigms and the master narrative into which they are so often placed” (Riots and Pogroms, p.11).

Every time these terror attacks, these ethnic riots take innocent lives, I wonder whether we are not too far away from regressing into complete barbarism. The irony of our hi-tech society is that the more we have advanced technological, the more reactionary have we become in terms of humanitarianism. If “eye for an eye” is the philosophy which rules the worldview of several ethnic groups that constitute this nation, the very idea of the Indian nation would collapse very soon, if it practically hasn’t already. Let’s delete such terms as democracy, republic, etc. from our constitution, which barely have anything to do with our present-day reality. The grand narrative of nationalism has already seen its demise in the wake of global postmodernism…only that, we are learning it the hard way. This is, however, not to suggest that any alternative to the democratic framework of the nation is desirable; we do not want India to emulate Burma or Sri Lanka. But what lies ahead is utter darkness. I feel sorry for myself that I cannot afford to be optimistic any more. Is there anyone out there who can see a silver lining anywhere on the fringes of this dark dismal cloud that has covered us?