Many happy returns

The liberal onslaught does not seem to abate. Despite Senas obliging them with sumptuous stuff, the appetite of this starved crowd of intellectuals with their manufactured outrage is getting insatiable by the day.

If the Black ink episode was ugly to soot, sorry, boot, the puerile parade by the target personality on media was sickening to bore … core. No wonder he lost TRP even before the ink faded and the liberal lot left him in the lurch to seek out more lucrative pastures. They can still bank on Sena, but for now, they are grazing on Modi, first his silence and then his statement, on what is now called ‘beef killing’ incident. Actually, a man was killed.

Meanwhile the queue of Sahitya Akademi returnees is lengthening with the award-collection dropbox overflowing. This elite procession is at once revealing and instructive. The self-identification stand-up show has obviated any necessity to search out all those who have been the beneficiaries of past patronages. But more importantly, it has come as an opportunity to exhume the reasons behind their recognition. Indeed, the liberal closet is wide open and the skeletons and fossils tumbling out make for a sordid spectacle.

Almost every awardee had had his/her share of controversies and detractors, not all off the mark. Many had questionable backgrounds; many more fell woefully short of answering the Akademi’s elementary conditions for the award. But, pedigree, personal contacts, PR clout and political loyalties erased anomalies, eased out competitors and enabled the awards for pets of the patrons. The political hand was invariably the Cong Hand. From Nehru to Sonia, all were quite liberal toward the, well, liberals.

After all, the Cong dynasty was always in dire need of all the liberalism floating in the market to sustain its hold over power and to get away with abominable atrocities. A liberal and intellectual coating is a great camouflage. Who else other than a liberal can wink at Edwina literally holding Nehru’s hand while drawing the partition map or igniting Kashmir or for that matter, getting her cigarette lighted by the PM himself in full public view? Can any non-liberal stomach the spurious saint Sonia and her sham sacrifices? ‘Voice’ Prez Raul is going to need every ounce of liberal largesse on the part of even his own party folk to be taken even mildly seriously.

It’s not for me to judge the worth of those literary works. But it surely looks to be payback time for many of these awardees. In a quid pro quo, give and take mileu, those who had taken now feel the urge or are urged to give back. After all it is just an award, a piece of paper, may be just thicker than their book page, a notional though national recognition. It is not a lottery, the return of which entails real loss; in which case we would need an Interpol search to fish out the liberals from their cosy ivory towers. And it is a double whammy too: there was applause when they got the award and there is applause when they return it now. Makes sense for a liberal mind.

The point is these beneficiaries belonged to a certain thought process which found favour with the then rulers. The awards, though from independent institutions, had political blessings. The rulers quoted people’s mandate to play benefactors. Today, the people have given an overwhelming mandate to the BJP and Modi. What’s wrong if the the current rulers interpret this mandate as a ratification of their well known ‘thought process’, be it on beef or censor board or literary awards et al? How can these liberals or their agent provocateurs in Cong and Left complain now?

So it all boils down to method. Let us rise above stupid Senas and their silly pranks that even non-liberals like you, me and the bulk of nation do not subscribe to. I for one would put my stock of ink to better use than as forced face makeup on faceless characters. But then, naxalites for instance have been painting the nation red with blood. Many ‘mainstream’ Left liberals have intellectualised and romanticised such terrorism openly. Now is ink worse than blood? Again, Does Jyoti Basu’s Stalinist regime of several decades qualify as liberal? If MF Husseins’ kinky drawings of Hindu Gods were liberal, why should similar stuff against Islam, raise liberal hackles?

Those who feel freedom of expression is paramount must think many times before accepting a Government honour. It does impose a shackle on the mind. There is now the additional prospect of having to return it some time. The ‘award-return’ fad has also made many of us wonder why the idea did not occur when worse atrocities happened during earlier regimes. The liberal hypocrisy has also run its course and run out of official caretakers too.

One must actually rejoice at the turn of events that the return of awards have set off.

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