Forget identity. Forget grievances, sentiments, duties, rights. Forget pain, and then learn to look at pain again. It is naked and it is masked. It is in you and me, in rage and fear, in aggression and passivity, in truth, and lies.
Everybody is desecrating the past. Everybody is endangering the future. Somebody must change. But who?
Another storm front of images approaches through our phones. They spew contempt and violence. Till one day ago, the past, in each of our minds, was free of this fear. Till one day ago, the past contained one understanding, one memory, one anchor of truth. Brahma murari surarchita lingam. Nirmala bhasita sobhita lingam.
Today, that past is already gone, swallowed by memes of madness and hate. Poison rain by pixels. Hate speech is hate, not just speech, they say. Words are violence, they say. Yet, all it takes is one more pretext. You can hide your gods where you want, but we will get them; and you. That’s what the hydrant jokes said, really.
One day before that, another storm. This time, images of a drained out well. We fear a repeat of 1992. You call our wazoo fountain your shiva lingam. You steal the ground from beneath where we walk, kneel, wash and pray.
That too is a fear of a past being desecrated.
Historians! Cosmopolitans! Your turn now. But everybody desecrated the past. Ten thousand Buddhist temples that Hindus must pay for. Forty thousand is an exaggeration. More temples were “protected” (not even “spared”) by the temple-breaker than were broken by him. He even gave jobs to your measly ancestors, you ingrates!
Denial. Distortion. That too is a desecration of the past.
Meanwhile, the solution, for some: our past came before yours. That statement is perhaps true. We see our present not as what your book says but as the love and labour of our elders who came before.
The so-called subaltern sings of his ancestors who made the sculptures and wove the garlands. The so-called savarna sings of his forebears who begged for alms and lived on the mercy of others. And both sing more and more these days of how their ancestors stood by the temples and the gods when the past-breakers came. And of how the gods were hidden behind the walls or under the soil or in the waters of rivers and lakes and wells. And how those that weren’t, became mere “idols,” smashed and studded into steps and pathways by celebrated butshikans (idol breakers).
That sense of the past is now strong, and getting stronger than ever. Does it endanger the future? Perhaps. But does it have to? That is the question.
Divided memories, divided sensibilities, and divided fears for the future. Us or them. Is that really the only way?
You were so divided, never a nation. We united you. 1991 Act. Status Quo. If your god was in the rubble as old war booty on August 15, 1947, so it shall be forever.
That’s one way to preach unity. But we were always one! We fought not as Hindus versus Muslims but as Indians versus… um, Foreigners.
That’s another way to preach unity. Sabka saath, sabka vikas!
Even our pleas for unity are divided. That is the truth. The past is desecrated. The present is divided. But the future is neither.
Look at how united we are in where we are taking this planet. Look at how united we are in thinking, and behaving, apocalyptically, like the End of the World didn’t happen as God planned it so we will all play God now and destroy it anyway.
We will unleash bioterrorist weapons in the form of bulldozers and lorries and cars on the planet. We will send forth swarms of invisible viruses to destroy you. We will devour anything alive that isn’t protected by human rights laws (and some of those too). We will build towers of communication infrastructure to wreck your minds and your relationships with your families, friends and communities, indeed, with reality itself.
We will still call You the Infinite One but work as if finitude is our religion and way of life.
Poison and propaganda. Everybody is endangered in the end. We argue merely over who’s to blame. Somebody must change. But who? How?
We will not know the answers as long as we continue to dwell in our own limited, divided, divisive ideas of the past and the present. We will not know if we sequester our past into arbitrarily relevant and irrelevant zones as if all that was jahil (uncivilised) anyway and needn’t be considered a part of others’ living memories anymore.
We will not know as long as we remain mere bodies programmed to “own” the planet rather than live for a while on it as children among mothers.
We will not know a thing, the longer our schools and media and political systems make us forget what it is to know others as elders and children, as custodians of duties existing in time and time alone. We are being mistaught every day.
The past is desecrated because we don’t see there are a trillion memories all around us, and even inside us. We don’t see our parents when they are here as ourselves in the future till it’s too late. We don’t see our children when we are still here as our chance to learn from our ancestors suddenly again, a second chance. We forget time, and live only in space, in the present. We see Hindus and Muslims, Indians and foreigners, us and them. And we see not one of these things with truth or love because we have lost our way with both, in seeing even me and you as me and you. Tat pranamami sadashiva lingam.
Dr.Lamba's Awakening Call 