THE GREAT INDIAN CIRCUS
Time for prohibition?
They have never been found wanting in explanations and slogans. The masters in the art of deceptive rhetoric that they are, the DMK chief and his band of rationalists do not miss an opportunity to pull the wool over the eyes of the people. But the people, we understand now, are even smarter and a bit more rational and have the capacity to tear it off and instead pull it over the eyes of these men.
So, the reason for the DMK combine’s defeat was after all the people’s intoxicated state of mind. And the reason for the intoxication was the stability slogan, we are being told by the master wool puller, who has lost his touch. Not a surprising conclusion from a man who thinks that loyalty to Tamil and commitment to Tamilians are as same as loyalty to himself and his clan. The auto-suggestion that he and Tamil pride are synonymous and that he is their sole representative has already cost his party dear in the past, but they never learn. It is futile to expect them to, for it is they who are really intoxicated by illusions of their own greatness and infallibility.
But all said, you will have to hand it out to the CM for coming up with such ‘brilliant’ explanations, even when defeat stares him in the eye point blank. But his efforts to divert the line of vision away from his direction is in fact the quintessence of his brand of politics, for defeats and drubbings are not new to him. The decisive slap on the face delivered by the voters now appears to have taken him totally by surprise, which explains the delirious ramblings about the people being in a daze and under the influence of the stability intoxication. Well, I shall now venture to take a leaf out of his book and try to put things in focus in his own dialect, the language of wines, dazes and intoxicants.
Come to think of it, the stability intoxication is not really bad, even if we were to concede the CM’s argument. One look at the brands of intoxications that were arrayed on the DMK’s showcase would reveal that the stability intoxication sold by his opponents was the mildest of all the stuff. For instance, consider the secular intoxication that is now the in thing among the otherwise empty shop of the United Front and its likely masters, the Congress. This particular intoxication was such a knockout that people ended up getting blown up skywards by fundamentalist outfits that had a stockpile, right under the noses of the rulers. The DMK was so inebriated under the influence of this intoxication that their vision and mind were adequately blurred to ensure that a few criminal elements went about bombarding the State and its populace with impunity. Now tell us, could the people have opted for this intoxication that rendered them corpses? Certainly, stability is just a soft drink compared to that explosive stuff.
What else do they have in their cellars? Ah, yes, the ethnic stuff. The CM would describe it as old wine. He knows the older the wine, more the kick. No wonder the DMK gets repeatedly kicked owing to the consumption of this heady wine. But it is and will ever remain their favourite. Even a man called Jain had given raving review about this old wine. The people of Tamilnadu are no strangers to this Indian made foreign intoxicant. The terrorists who hailed from an idyllic island across the borders were given license to deal in this exclusive stuff during the days of the Thaanai Thalaivan‘s dispensation. Those days would also rank among the most memorable heydays of the terrorists. The unsolicited blessings from their ethnic brethren here led by the Chief Minister himself, an overwhelming groundswell of support from the ruling partymen and a remarkable display of abstinence from the call of duty by the law enforcing authorities, all together ensured that these gun-toting salesmen of the ethnic wine made a killing, rather several killings. Is this the intoxication the people should have voted for? Not certainly, for such heady stuff is clearly unpalatable for the peace loving people of the state. The stability intoxication is just mineral water compared to that.
There were also several other such intoxications that had occupied the DMK’s cold storages from time to time. There was the intoxication offered by scientific corruption, a certified and patented brand at that. Then there were other intoxications like secession and the anti-Hindi propagandas, but such stuff had to, be either diluted or wholly condemned owing to lack of consumers. The DMK itself traded in the stability intoxication briefly when they struck up a joint venture with Indira’s Congress. The self-respecting leader had even coined a sales phrase, something on these lines: Vote for Nehru’s daughter for stability. The leader now says it was a mistake to have stocked that brand. No wonder, because such mild beverages are only for beginners. They are pastmasters in the art of brewing headier varieties, and stability intoxication is just plain water to them.
But the recent elections have proved that the people of the state prefer to be sober and would rather go for the stability stuff. They realise what the DMK’s brand of secular and ethnic intoxications can do to the polity and peace. The defeated and deflated Front’s leaders themselves agree that the bomb blasts have cost them heavy and we all know that the carnage was the direct result of the secular intoxication that blinded them to the activities of the perpetrators. Having conceded, wittingly or unwittingly, the fact that they have forfeited the people’s confidence in them to provide safety from such elements, is it not the morally right thing to voluntarily close the ‘wine shop’? Or are they going to wait for the Centre to intervene to bring about total ‘prohibition’?
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