Poor ideas often become alarmingly popular, good ones get cast by the wayside. What side of the table would have been the side to choose at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria in the September of 1938? On one side of it sat Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, on the other sundry eminences of an alliance already hounded to supplication, most prominently Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain. The Austrian Anschluss was done and dusted, chunks of what used to be Czechoslovakia were about to be served to Hitler as appeasement pie. The hope on one side of the table was that the Munich Agreement would make dessert and sate his appetite for Lebensraum; Hitler was only treating it as hors d’oeuvre.

But let’s leave what was served on the Bavarian table, let’s return to the two sides of it. Which side would have been the right one to pick? But is that even a question to ask? The right side, of course, didn’t win that day, the wrong one was handed rampaging rights. That table left us a lesson to be learnt, a lesson we often forget, and often suffer for the forgetting. The good idea is often poorly led; the bad one is brilliantly brandished. We may have been on that table a while now — diabolical talent strutting on one side, virtue slumbering on the other over what it takes to get kindled.

Narendra Modi’s accession to power in 2014 uncorked the wounding of India with bolts of shock that may already have succeeded in obliterating what we used to be with blotches of the new normal. The most recent act of such re-branding is the official deification of Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar, patron saint of the powers and pupil to the abhorrent philosophies of Hitler and his abominable adherents. Golwalkar, it has now been proclaimed, shall inspire generations of Indians. Read Bunch of Thoughts and you will probably get a glimpse of what comprises inspiration — it doesn’t stop at plagiarism of putrescence, it is an exhort to punishable prejudices of the sort that we are getting used to committing or, more woefully, turning indifferent to.

But in arriving at the unseemly altar of Golwalkar, we have traversed a journey; if, somewhere along the way, we’d have stopped and asked questions, wondered why, we probably wouldn’t be here. But there is still time, and opportunity, to see where we have landed ourselves. It no longer affects us that Nathuram Godse, assassin of Gandhi, has become a celebrated deity, does it? Lynching, trashing, just shaming folks for who they pray to and what they wear have become a thing to do, hasn’t it? Valley Kashmiris are all deserving of the lavish punishments wreaked on them, aren’t they? Dalits can be tied up, lashed and videographed; they are getting too big for shoes they never had. Our book of synonyms has become so much richer for how human beings can also now be referred to — termites, reptiles, snakes, insects, creepy-crawlies, keede-makode... sanctified terms. Some of those categories are deserving of being exterminated... sanctioned treatment, pronounced from lofty platforms. We don’t seem to care too much that a hostile neighbour has pawed away our territory and sits there dictating terms to our stuttering champions of nationalism. Cast a glance at our fallen status on global indices — of the state of our freedoms, of human rights, of corruption, of governmental excess. But we don’t need lectures from the world on who we are and how we shall be. We shall put people behind bars for not cracking the joke that was allegedly cracked. We shall arraign young ladies for standing up for those that make us a krishi-pradhan desh — our farmers. And those sons of this soil we are not embarrassed to call all manner of names they shouldn’t be called. Nothing stirs us. More than a hundred of those farmers perished on the vigil, but who cares? No, but we do care. For a mobile tower that fell victim to a dastardly agitation. We do care to question the right of labourers to be entitled to a wage because the sarkar is already feeding them for free. We do care to unleash the agencies of State on its people — sleuths armed with files and fabrication, jawans armed with everything — from water cannons to batons to fire-arms — plain-clothed agents licensed with monopoly on violence. We do care to char the evidence of crime under police protection. We do care to extract reparation from a citizenry harassed to the barricades. We do care to announce with fanfare that justice is no longer a thing to be equitably demanded or disbursed. Habeas corpus? But whatever is that? We upturned the fundamental principles of justice; jail gets precedence over bail, you are guilty before you have proved yourself innocent. Our prime minister plays mahant of the republic whose rules he defies and defines as he goes along and as he pleases, a man who, after the fashion of the most flagrant tinpots, wears monogrammed suits and gets spanking playing arenas named after him frilled out with tributes to pet cronies. We have arrived at disquieting violations of who we are, culturally and constitutionally, but remember, these violations are presided upon with unmatched energy and gusto. Some of what has become normal is debased and wicked, ideas and practices that take the sword and fire to the Constitution that the chief violator still implants dubious kisses on. He possesses imperial command, though he hectors and he is heeded, he soars above the field. It isn’t the first time foul notions are flying high.

But we mustn’t omit to mention the laying low of the fair notions, the lackadaisical betrayal of them. Rahul Gandhi, espouser of right and reasonable things — plurality, inclusiveness, the ethics of equitability — he mingles, he listens, he sails close to the ideas that have kept the complex diversity of this nation sewn together, stood us under the same flag singing the same anthem. But Rahul Gandhi is also notoriously truant and whimsical, he’s there one day, gone the other. The good idea he has turned into a plaything of his caprice. Does he care that his ally in Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has just certified the unvarnished majoritarianism of the sangh? Did he even know, or care, that his party was sharing the stage of Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui’s anointment, as effective a fillip to the politics of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ as could be ordered? Rahul Gandhi refuses to take charge, he is reluctant to put another in charge — na banoonga, na banne doonga (I shan’t become and I won’t let another become). He declines to inhabit and animate the good idea, it has turned ramshackle on his watch, a frittered, unthinking thing. He once walked across the Lok Sabha floor chanting love and hugged Narendra Modi, believing that would make a better man of him. He mimicked Chamberlain’s handshake with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. We know what came of it.

sankarshan.thakur@abp.in