The Idea of Indianness

It's a strange world out there. Somehow, everybody seems to be there for his/her personal gains, caring for nothing whatsoever. And still one person stands out.....Shahrukh Khan. I am not a huge admirer of Shahrukh Khan the actor or Shahrukh Khan the businessman. But I like this guy as a person. If not anything else, this man is at least honest. There might be some arrogance in this honesty but there is no hypocrisy for sure.

So it was nice to hear him say that he won't apologize to Bal Thackrey/ShivSena for backing Pakistani cricketers. What he said might be for his own motive, for his own gains as an owner of IPL team. But he refuses to back down from something he stands for fully aware of the fact that this could cost him and his upcoming movie heavily. At the same time one wonders, why are Marathi people not coming out in support for this man. Why can't we see actors like Ritesh Deshmukh, Nana Patekar voicing the same opinion as Sachin Tendulkar did a few days back??? Or probably they have sold the sense of National pride along with their souls.

And then we have people like Amitabh Bachchan. He might be a great actor but somehow I have lost all my respect for Amitabh Bachchan, the person. He does not seem to be affected by the plight of artists or his fellow actors in Mumbai. Instead he praises the biggest goonda who virtually rules Mumbai with an iron hand. He was only affected when Raj Thakrey was coming out all guns blazing against him. But since he is friends with probably the most influential family in Mumbai, he won't utter a word against them, even though they are doing almost similar to others what had been done against him a few months back by a relative of theirs. Probably...probably the fact that now he has lost his backing in Samajwadi Party (Amar Singh is now thrown out of party) has forced him to show the true colours of this "farmer". Seems like he himself is playing the role of Jai Malik(his son in Rann) in real life.

It's strange that the central government is not taking any strict actions against these goons. How long will they keep on running from such issues remains to be seen. Democracy does not mean letting loose people who are a threat to countrymen just because they have a backing of a minuscule percentage of population. It's amazing that a man(Manohar Joshi) who used to occupy an extremely prestigious position of Speaker in the Lok Sabha opines that Mumbai is only for the Marathis. How low can one stoop for petty gains???

I remember in my school days, we had a teacher who used to say that if our country follows what Bal Thackrey says, we would be on top of the world. Fortunately we didn't pay much attention to her (the fact that we didn't pay attention to anything else taught in school ever otherwise is a different story) I wonder if she thinks the same now.

Somehow all this was going to happen someday or the other. First we'll hate people of other religion, then of other state, then of other caste/community, then of various sections of the same caste and then we'll hate our neighbours. It's high time that we stop being patriotic only when it comes to cricket matches or publicly bashing Pakistan. We are bringing about nothing but our own downfall. Let's be Indians first and everything else later...Time to wake up fellow countrymen....All RISE