We are being eaten alive

Economists will spend the next few years giving us reasons for why a country once referred to as an emerging powerhouse has been reduced to the kind of place where hospitals have to beg for oxygen on Twitter. Pic/AFP

The hope I usually have for India and her future continues to ebb with every passing day of this pandemic. This isn't just because we appear to have failed at every step, because we have clowns masquerading as leaders, or criminals representing us in Parliament. It isn't about the abysmal state of our healthcare system either, or the lack of transparency that allows millions of funds to vanish. It has more to do with how people among us - friends, neighbours, classmates, colleagues - have enabled this by allowing their bigotry to eat away at the once beautiful idea of India.

There have been signs of this decline all around us for as long as I can remember, of course, but it is our continued refusal to acknowledge this that has brought us to the edge of this precipice. Economists will spend the next few years giving us reasons for why a country once referred to as an emerging powerhouse has been reduced to the kind of place where hospitals have to beg for oxygen on Twitter. They will ignore the rot that has set deep into millions of Indian hearts and look for market indicators instead.

The truth is we are here, in our current position, because there are more bigots than rational people among us. I once assumed we would get over this irrational hate that drives so many of us to pick on our countrymen for no apparent reason. I assumed common sense would triumph over these accidents of birth that make us boldly adhere to some religious beliefs and reject all others. I assumed a love for India and what she has represented for thousands of years would allow us to rise above arbitrary and inhuman systems of social classification. I was, and continue to be, proven wrong on all fronts.

A cursory look at how we react to cries for help on social media can be extremely revealing of our attitudes. The first thing millions of us now consider is religion; everything else fades into insignificance. It is the overriding thought that consumes us, compelling us to ignore anything and everything else. It is what fuels us, what occupies our minds and hearts, what makes us applaud the kind of people who belong in jail.

The politicians currently in power have used every trick in their books to exploit this bigotry to the hilt. They have pitted us against each other for years, made us look for enemies that do not exist, and gently nudged us like sheep into voting booths to coerce us into making them our overlords. They have done this with impunity because they have figured out that they don't need to be held accountable. Our relatives can die because of their negligence; we can lose our jobs because of ill-informed and hare-brained decisions; they can use our taxes to build palatial homes instead of hospitals, but we won't complain as long as they promise to protect us from people who bow to different gods.

It doesn't take much intelligence to understand the absurdity of our situation. We literally choose our own demise and the destruction of our country because we believe we should protect our gods from other gods. Lessons learned and accrued over thousands of years have failed to teach us anything, as we pass these prejudices onto the untainted generations coming after us. I thought a pandemic would force us to evaluate our priorities, but it only made us dig our heels in further.

Decades from now, when real journalists who aren't throttled by fascism sit down and write about how India tackled the pandemic, they may be able to explain why we succumbed as quickly as we did. They may be able to draw a line from the hate and propaganda to our helplessness in the face of a virus that had no interest in religious beliefs. When that day comes, I hope the Indians who come after us will recoil at the price we paid for our bigotry, and how it allowed us to sell our souls, our public assets, and our country, to people of no integrity or conscience. I hope they will finally understand what we, our parents, and grandparents failed to fathom: that a nation built by bigotry and oppression isn't a nation worth believing in.

I also hope those future countrymen scratch their heads in wonderment as they try and explain why Indians were dying on the street while their representatives renovated Parliament.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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