Riding on his own rhetoric

The decision of the Sankaracharyas to keep away from the very secular Railway function has, if anything, at least made one point clear to our rational rajas. The loud message is that self-respect is not the sole prerogative of these dravidian paragons and even the ‘non-rationalists’ do have it in abundance.

And in line with the dignity of their hallowed status as pontiffs, while they have silently but emphatically answered to the insult, they have also exhibited their responsibility and good wishes by visiting the railway site, ‘after the function’.

Surely, the loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed politicians of the current hue will not understand such subtleties and finer feelings. And so Karunanidhi must be celebrating the triumph of ‘secularism over communalism’. For he has achieved what he really wanted to, which was to somehow prevent the Sankaracharyas from attending the function, as his infinite contempt for the mutt and its inhabitants is legendary. All the secular bogeys were only directed to this end and one can visualise the utter glee in the camp of the yellow towel rationalists.

Victory indeed, if one were to accept the skewed rational logic of these hollow rhetoricians. For, their sense of success is based on the presumption that the Sankaracharyas were dying to get themselves invited to the function. Not surprising, because when it comes to garlands and shawls, the dravidian parivar led by the Thaanai Thalaivan, tends to superimpose their own shameless greed for credit, on others too.

 More so, if the ‘competing’ VIP happens to hail from ‘that’ community. And based on this fallacied premise, they take on their opponents by letting loose a barrage of innuendos through their acid tongues that know no decency. They are however careful to couch their demented ideas in chaste Tamil, besides adding a camouflage of that vague concept called secularism.

But then you don’t have to see and hear a fox to know its character. Its image walks before it. The sensible ones are not foxed by the fox’s bleatings and instead would prefer to ignore it, as such beings are beneath contempt. When empty drums create such a din, full vessels do not reciprocate for the simple reason that the latter know best the calibre of the former.

No wonder that, while Minister Ponmudi walked away with the shawl and the mementoes, the Sankaracharyas remained the cynosure even in absentia. Their intention was to bless, and they did it though away from the arc lights. The minister, of course was beaming at the cameras, in true dravidian style as popularised by his leader who respects his own self more than anything else.

Men in power can be expected to possess some amount of responsibility and sensitivity. Out of office, they can afford an unbridled tongue but once in a position of power, circumspection should be the rule. Those who voted for the DMK included the believers too and they did not do so to endorse the party and its leader’s atheistic leanings.

On the contrary, the rulers are where they are because of the perceived failings of their opponents. If the DMK leader and his co-borns believe that they are here to propound their anti-faith ideologies, they are woefully wrong. Rather he and his hordes are only guilty of whipping up communal feelings and reminding even the timid of their religious identities by resorting to such deliberate slights, that too very selectively.

He must understand that his party’s ire against a particular community is no longer relevant for the so-called domination has ceased long back. Such unwarranted contempt also militates against the oath of office taken at the time of swearing in that he would be fair and impartial to all, which includes the ‘aryans’ too!

Political power has long ago shifted to the hands of all the CM’s men, and it is our sincere counsel that he should start pondering over why there are still caste clashes and communal acrimony, even after a particular community’s ‘monopoly’ has been wiped out. He will understand that the perceived enemy was no enemy at all, and the alleged upperhand was because of an unintended historical aberration and not by any deliberate action.

This is in sharp contrast to the character of the present day clashes, where the literal fight to finish is merely to establish caste superiority ‘among the very dravidian people’ of the State. His intelligent mind should have by now deciphered that it is his own self-respecting, rationalist co-borns who are fighting each other with no participation from his sworn ideological, perennial enemies.

The CM has only been barking up the wrong tree all along and the Sankaracharya episode only confirms that the spots and stripes are where they were. After all a man who has deceived multitudes through glib talk for several decades is more prone to fall a victim to his own delusive rhetoric.

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