My Country

What is it with my country? Or is it just me? Maybe I have become too much of a critic in my own country J. Happy is a person who finds faults in himself instead of others…but I cant stop myself. I read somewhere recently that the Indian cabinet has made a rule to have female judges to look over rape cases of women. The explanation given is that a male would not understand the emotional stress and battle that the vistim goes through! What kind of an apartheid is this now. Do you mean to say now the “Dalits” will now have a separate “Dalit” judge? The muslims will have a separate Islamic fakir or mullah to look over it? Or better still child custody cases should be judged by kid-judges (whatever that means!) so that they can better understand the “emotional” battle that the children go through. To go before a crowd and accept that she has been molested and ripped off her privacy is a big step. Does the fact that another female will question her make her feel any better? If that has to happen, then the judgement should be likewise and not that you decide whether you need a female lawyer or judge.
The next big doubt would be that this is Indian culture and is not to be “besmirched” as it is done in the west. J Christ, what culture are they talking about? If it is what our ancestors had and had tried to pass over to us, all that is gone. All that remains now is a shadow of that culture, remains of a past heritage and now it is an exhibit. An exhibit that makes India “different”.
I m not denying all that. I love my country and it pains me to see the things that go on everyday. My friends tell me, it happens everywhere. So what? I mean, should it make me feel better that since it happens everywhere it is ok if it happens here? Every time I read some great nationalist leader’s autobiography or anything that happened, I wonder what happened to the India they dreamt of? It’s good they are no more.
It’s not the country that worries me. I love it, with all it’s crowds, and it’s traffic jams and it’s pollution and it’s poverty. It’s the people who worry me. Even now I can overhear people how Gandhi or Nehru were wrong and stupid. I feel like sniggering at them. I feel like asking them “What do you know?”. I m not siding Gandhiji. I would never do that. Coz I don’t know what happened. All I know is a documented set of texts which claim how he got us freedom. All said and done we are free today. Is it not enough to thank our stars that we are free and get on with our lives? How many countries today are still slaves of another nation? We could be in that state.
But still we’ll have everyone cribbing about how wrong the leaders were………..