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ShareAhmedabad: I sometimes wonder if we Gujaratis are particularly susceptible to being manipulated. Are we sitting ducks for well-managed PR campaigns or are we just so super self-involved that we don't care?
Why did I get off on this chain of thought? Well yesterday morning's papers once again brought forth the Gujarat Virodhi theory to something that had gone wrong -- this time to the unlikely case of the hooch tragedy. A senior police official has publicly told a newspaper that he suspects a conspiracy to defame Gujarat -- that the entire toxic brew was intentionally concocted and distributed so as to show Gujarat and its prohibition policy in bad light.
In all my years of reading papers and watching television news, in intellectual discussions and in drawing room conversations, I have never heard another state nor its people
so obsessed with being the subject of conspiracies to defame it. In fact, I have never heard another state's name suffixed with the term 'Virodhi'. What then makes us believe that the world is against us and out to get us?
While the present government has made an art and a science of this phobia and drumming up xenophobia in its wake, the issue itself is hardly new. In the mid-1970s, my mother and Baba Amte had raised concerns about the fate of the Narmada oustees, and their rehabilitation. Immediately, the then powers that be named her a Gujarat Virodhi -- a Keralite who cared nothing for this state and wished it ill.
This to a woman, who put the state on the classical map of the world and who, at that time, had made Gurjari -- the government's till then defunct handicrafts corporation -- the most covered brand of handicrafts. And her comment was not even about the dam! Meanwhile, the Narmada oustees' question still remains.
Then of course there is M...... P.......... Even a mention of her name is worse than the toxic brew of latthakand. Her demonisation is the government's PR machinery's most successful campaign. Forget the issue and whether one agrees or not; her shadow itself has been demonised, and being in the same conference or meeting with her is more contaminating than leprosy. The entire public goes into a frenzy of pseudo patriotism.
This is not withstanding the fact that thousands of kilometres of the damn's waterways remain unfinished, that the bad quality of building has ruined lakhs of farmers and that the Nigam responsible for it is devoid of the engineering workforce to salvage matters.
NO, NO, NO. This is like the cow, the mother of all issues, so emotionally charged that even the most educated react to it like the bull to the red flag.
There are others, those who ask questions, those who think our policies are flawed, and those who question the integrity of the government or its wisdom. Those who speak of the human rights and dignity of the Gujarati people being trampled upon. Those who wish real justice for those injured or maligned.
In fact, there is a Gujarat Virodhi lurking behind every corner.
Have any of us so-called thinking people wondered why we are the only ones the world is out to get? Is that not supreme egotism in itself? Does the world really have the time to be so Gujarat-centric? And if we ARE so special, shouldn't we be filled with security and self-fulfilment instead of the insecurity manifest in all our worlds and deeds?
And by asking these questions, have I become the latest Gujarat Virodhi?
