Comment

Have you seen pictures of Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik? Whether screaming his message of hate or essaying a 'smile', his is as ugly a face as you can find. Not because God gave him distorted features, but because his gospel of spite and loathing has twisted them, so that his habitual expression seems to be a snarl. What else do you expect of a man who in order to 'protect' the morals of women will manhandle them? Is this the face of Hindutva? Is this the face of Hindu tradition? Is this the face of India we want the world to see?

Muthalik represents neither Hinduism nor India. He does not even represent the ultra-conservative andoverly-orthodox traditionalist side of our country which may sympathise with some of his values but will be repelled by his goondaism. All Muthalik represents is a rag-tag collection of lumpen youth, almost all of whom are unemployed and who would themselves like nothing better than to go drinking in a pub, preferably in female company.

Given all that, in any mature country Muthalik and his goons would have been arrested, put behind bars and sentenced to the jail terms they deserve, without any fuss or media outcry. But ours is not a mature country. As you can see from the official reactions; a so-called panel constituted to go into the incident came to the laughable conclusion that the pub should have more security (blame the victim, blame the victim!) and our so-called leaders jumped into a perceived vote-grabbing bandwagon. This includes the BJP president, the RSS chief, the Karnataka chief minister, the Rajasthan(!) chief minister, a CPM commissar and the perennial headline hunter the Union health minister, all of whom have chorused loudly together “Pub culture is against Indian tradition and ethos.”

This statement implies that Messrs Yeddyurappa, Rajnath Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Anbumani Ramadossand company know what Indian cultural values and traditional ethos represent. Let’s see now: Political Skullduggery, that’s tradition and ethos No.1. Opportunism is No.2.Lack of principles follows, which includes corruption or at least tolerance of corruption. Political expediency is high on the list as is hypocricy (how many of those railing against pub culture have well-stocked bars at home?)The gentlemen named above may be too honourable for other political stocks-in-trade but surely they have been associated with these in their careers. These include the worst criminal actions such as kidnapping and murder, rioting and communal killings…The space for this column is limited but I am sure all of you who read this can complete the Politicians’ Guide to Indian Culture and Ethos.

In any case what do these dinosaurs is pub culture? The institution of the pub is admittedly British, but then so are many of our best institutions, including our education and railway systems. It also includes our judicial system, which Ramadoss, Yediurappa, Gehlot and company should be asked to get a personal taste of if they interfere too much with our personal liberties. A pub is where people go to meet, relax over a drink after a hard day’s work and no pun intended, generally revive their spirits.Underage drinking and drunk driving are evils which can be curbed by better policing. Banning pubs or making liquor difficult to get will only result in driving the trade underground where it willfleece consumers andsimultaneously deprive the government of much-needed revenue. See what happens in sanctimonious Gujarat. Or what used to happen in Tamil Nadu when it was under prohibition.

What our fossilised politicians don’t realise is that you can’t legislate against human nature. Ourgods, our Hindu gods, knew that; they also themselves knew and experienced the pleasures of the flesh including drink and celebrated it in very many ways. That’s because our Gods, unlike our senile politicians knew that there are joys in life which we should snatch wherever we can, provided of course, we do so in a responsible way.