Demonise or deify, that seems to be the only alternative in wor(l)ds g(r)o(w)ing bitter rather than better, bit by bit, beat by beat! Sad scenario indeed!
Let me give you an example or two. Look at Pandit Nehru whose death anniversary is celebrated on May 27. As a literature student, quite early in my life, I read Girish Karnad's "Tughlaq". Later I had to teach it as well. In brief, I can say with some authority that I know the text and the 'con'text(s) of the play rather well.
Well, but obviously, the play is a critique of the final years of the Nehru regime. It is not exactly a flattering presentation either. Nehru is vividly compared with Tughlaq whose reign the play presents at the surface level.
In other words, as a literature student, I am used to two things, firstly, "contextualise, contextualise" and secondly, see every event, each person full face, profile and the silhouette, that is, virtues, and warts all!
Okay, let me give you another example. Read Shashi Tharoor's "The Great Indian Novel" or Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" to understand why I find the 'deify or demonise' binary confounding. Well, the very contexts then were different. Times, they change, you know! And, drastically!
Moreover, none is perfect. In totality, unmistakably, in the thinking patterns of each, chinks would be there. The moment hence people play the 'deify or demonise' game, they belittle their own god (as backlash would not even need the Newtonian Third Law of Motion of the action/reaction variety) and cheapen themselves and the cause in the Bush mode of 'with us or with them' duality during the infamous Iraq WMD days!
The pointing finger sure directs your own four fingers to you, right? When X calls Y 'andhbhakt', two inevitable possibilities emerge. It clearly shows that in his/her bitter anger, X is forgetting that he/she, too, is an 'andhbhakt' of someone else, and much worse, an 'andh-hater' of someone which is hardly an intelligent, forget intellectual, position.
The 'deify or demonise' dilemma completely overlooks the real issues. Right now, for example, it is the media moghuls (with technological toolkits getting more and more sophisticated by the second) who are deciding for the most of us what to think and how to think. Such world wide webs are so gigantic that puny hatreds for the sake of hating appear appallingly funny! Honest!
Well, for one thing, I believe most sincerely in deep self reflection, in critiquing my own person, passions, positions! Binaries, moreover, are absolutely problematic for me, a student of the latest school in Criticism! For every post-colonialism, indeed exists a deeper ( and dapper!) decoloniality!
Pratima@"It is human nature," says Tacitus, "to hate a person he himself has injured."
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