Chitvan Gill

Dearest Dad, Love, forever. On the occasion of your 9thanniversary I am compelled to turn to the words you left us with, even as I try to make sense of the times we find ourselves in. “All religions have been transformed into ‘holy cows’ today, and religious discourse is severely circumscribed by the fear of ‘offending the sentiments’ of highly volatile masses, who have no interest or understanding of such discourse, but who will run riot and kill with absolute abandon on the command of manipulative and highly politicised leaders.” KPS Gill, The Knights Of Falsehood These ‘sentimental masses’, could, at the appropriate moment, belong to any convenient religion, depending on the particular political persuasion in charge. This, it seems, has been and will be the way this country will be governed. As increasingly more and more of the marginalised and disenfranchised are forced into a world of suffering, we wait, rods and axes ready, filled with a self-righteous fury, waiting to strike at, to lynch, to be part of enraged mobs. And in these days that pass in frenzied abhorrence of the ‘other’, we fail to notice that we have been left with nothing, as we clutch desperately onto the mantle of hate. If we examine a single state, Punjab, we have a clear trajectory of the way this phenomenon plays out. The people were sucked into a vortex of brutality, the culmination of years of devious machinations by various political parties across the spectrum, exploiting the volatile playing fields of religion. In the fog-addled reserves of memory it is now hard for anyone to remember the time when Delhi, quivering at the knees, the monster at the door, had said with bile in its breath, “Let it go”. ‘It’, was the state of Punjab. The political intrigues and cynical manipulations by politicians desperate for the caress of power had set in motion the beginnings of the end of India. And that is what will always be the fallout of such venomous political cynicism. Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional men and women. Punjab, and more than that, the sovereign nation of India, was brought back from the brink by such men and women, by the forces that fought back, led from the front by you, Dad. They restored honour and delivered the people from the mindless fear that had enveloped Punjab. By 1994 the state had reclaimed its status as one of India’s most prosperous and thriving states, filled with the natural characteristics of that land of the Jat Sikhs, once again resounding with music and laughter. It is now 2026. Punjab has been roiled for the past two decades by the depredations of its rampaging politicians. It finds itself backed into a darkness riddled by debt, its bright young people falling prey to the scourge of drugs and crime, as joblessness stares them in the face. What, you ask, can be done in this situation. Well, the politicians are once again delivering their answers. The same ideas, the same scramble for power regardless of the cost, and the recalling and nurturing of the very forces that unleased the tragedy that engulfed Punjab through the 1980s and early 1990s. The wheel is turning once again. We are looking into the abyss.