THE SULEKHA COMMUNITY
It all began when I visited a=
post
entitled ‘M.K.Gandhi - Was he a victim=
of
his Idealism?’ by Ms. Bijaya Ghosh in the Sulekha.com and posted an innocuous comm=
ent
there. Being a relatively new blogger on the In=
ternet,
I was in for a rude e-shock. Within a few hours of my posting, there was a
shower of opinions that slowly snowballed into a heated argument, which
naturally had me befuddled at first. Surprisingly the debate started to dev=
iate
from the subject and ultimately converged into a projection of sheer religi=
ous hostility,
even amounting to direct personal assaults. Some of the insults felt like t=
hey
had been fomented for a long period and were now freely flowing. What was m=
ore
surprising was the fact that I was not in a war of words with some boorish =
Jehadi or VHP leaders but an educated mass of middle =
class
It is not as if =
I have
not done my homework on the Father of our Nation. The fact is that sometimes
kids, at some stage in their life, do not want to discover that a father, w=
hom
they had idolized all along, is also only a human being with flaws. But does
that give us the right to mercilessly delve into his past, rummage into his=
cupboards
for long forgotten skeletons and air his dirty laundry in public? Isn’=
;t his
contribution, for being born into a free
All of us self-qualified armchair
surgeons are well aware that such post mortems can never again resurrect the
Pre-Independence age. It is this complacency that makes the dissection of
history so easy today. To dispute about a placid past is so much safer and =
easier
than to actually deal with a volatile present. In that era we needed more t=
han
a mere toxic pen to grant freedom from our oppressors. As somebody pointed =
out,
all the other countries which were fighting for independence at the same ti=
me
as we did went to choose warfare as their methodology for fight, but Mahatma
Gandhi was only distinguishable because of his approach. So simply by analy=
zing
or arguing, like what we are best at doing now, ‘momentous
decisions’ which altered the mood of our Nation would never have taken
place.
With a neo-cultural nametag
flaunting my secular image, I was always under the smug impression that I h=
ad
crossed the barriers of convergence and was heading towards a progressive
kinship of Indianisation. Being a sentimental f=
ool, I
was also hurt with these reprisals. My husband and daughter asked me to imm=
ediately
withdraw from the ‘rut’ and join a sensible
‘community’. Being a writer, I argued that I was in one. I belo=
nged
to the Sulekha Community. In the present scenar=
io the
most judicious decision I had undertaken, according to the critic in me, wa=
s to
enroll myself and belong to a universal community. And people with ‘g=
ood
writing’ skills certainly qualified to be a safe commune to belong to.
With Religion fast becoming the gizmo through which people mercilessly oper=
ated
and with terrorism fast disguising itself in the cloaks of patriotism, I fe=
el a
bit queasy and sadly not- so- proud of our ‘cultural and religious
roots’ any more. Here, in this community, I could branch out into the
open with my ideas to try and make the world a peaceful place to live in. H=
ere
I could join hands with the rest of the bloggers to try
and feel the pulse of humankind. How wrong I was! Here I was, posting a mere
remark and instead of getting accolades, I was getting bombarded with offen=
se.
Then I realized something - that pu=
tting
down someone (the way a chosen few on the blog =
were
adept at doing) does not equate to elevating themselves. They would always
belong where they did. So once reason had dawned, my vengeance towards such
inane matters started to set. I gracefully retired from the arguments. It w=
as
also at this point that my friend encouraged me, by pointing out a few
‘comment arguments’ in the same vein, which had flourished earl=
ier
on the blog. I went and checked them out. Needl=
ess to
say I was relieved!
Perspective is reality. So when som=
eone
perceives I am ill-advised I naturally begin to think I am. But after readi=
ng
the other comments on the blog (where other sen=
sible writers
were also blasted in the same manner by the same set of
‘commentators’) I understood that perspective can also be an
illusion- especially if the angle of the viewpoint is somewhat lopsided.
Anyway, one thing I have learnt. I=
f I
did not want to shed tears, I should never have opted to peel the onions. So
next time, I’ll probably stay away from the onions, for although they=
do
the necessary spicing up bit, they will always have a ‘root’
problem. Since Sulekha is a free space, I surely
cannot hope that it can filter out the chaff from the grain. But at least I=
can
keep my fingers crossed (believe me, it’s quite an exercise, especial=
ly
when one is typing) and sincerely hope that in future, this community will =
harvest
more grain than chaff.
P.S.
Boy! Am I glad that there are no ‘comment boxes’ here on IrastimesJ