After a long time, hello to the few people who care to read me and to those, who don’t. This is my first post in English,so if you find any type of mistakes, do inform me.
Since the first fast held at Jantar-Mantar by Sh.Anna Hazare,I’ve- for the first time in my life- cared to see Indian politics’ present condition. Over the past few months, there was a parallel wave of mixed expressions of feelings of my friends on the issue of reservation which increased both in amplitude and frequency as the release of the film approached, and in the past few days of August,I witnessed the dirty politics of vote banks playing its part by acting a parallel censor board, to prevent a broad minded lesson from reaching and cleaning up the mud filled in our Janata Janardan- in the name of castes, religion, region, language and society.
As I already tweeted,a more non offensive and impartial movie on such a sensitive issue is impossible to imagine. Prakash Jha has been very honest in making an impartial movie and I congratulate the whole of the team of Aarakshan for this. Though I differ on many points from the views expressed about the policy of reservation during the promotion of the movie, but I am completely in support of the answer to the question asked by Saif in this movie -”kya aap aarakshan ke paksh mein hain?”
Let’s begin with the glimpses of history that we can see in this movie. On the basis of caste and religion many people (educated dumbsters) think others as inferior to themselves. We Indians have done a Ph.D.in lecturership when it comes to preaching about religions and castes. We have an expertise in finding out the flaws of other people, but we don’t dare to examine ourselves. Some unfortunately born in India people sometime in the past, changed the caste system’s base from the ‘karam’ to ‘janam’. This much of history we all have learnt on our secondary school level.
This caste system is still being followed in India, and have given us nothing but hatred and walls that divide the castes on the basis of higher or lower. But following the independence of the country, the freedom fighters were actually aware and sympathetic on the issue of social reforms, unlike the present (non-sym)pathetic politicians who replaced the freedom fighters, and its just because of their (non-sym)pathetic approach that we are witnessing the serious issues of brain drain from India. We all know that this policy was initially introduced only for 10 years, to be withdrawn afterwards. At that time, the backward classes were in a worse condition than now. As education and social reforms were introduced in the backward classes, they came forward to participate in the mainstream of the country, and that was the time some persons proved themselves worthless, when instead of working for trhe social reforms and developement,they chose to work for particular communities, and that’s precisely the point where our government machinery failed to introduce further social reforms,which culminated in playing politics in the name of totally apolitical issues. Thats when those situations were born, which are very adequately highlighted in the first half, where a poor candidate of general category,despite qualifying, gets rejected. Our governments (not many sane governments we have seen after independence) have always been silent on this issue. Because the solution to this issue will lead to destruction of the political careers of all the present leaders, because many have established their careers on the basis of spreading hatred in the country, as is evident when we look upto the political career of present UP CM.
If it is so, then what’s the solution? The solution is very simple if we have a clear conscience that can rise above the trivial selfish issues to solve the problems of the nation.I have known the solution from the very day I became aware of what are the problems, and at that time I was a student of 9th class. And since then, I was in doubt whether I am right or wrong, but today, as I have seen Prakash Jha picturising the same solution on celluloid, I am pretty sure that our politicians either are so intelligent that they don’t want us to be united- as is evident by “tilak, taraaju aur talwaar- inko maaro joote chaar”, or they are dumber than a 9th class student. The remaining mess was created by the commercialisation of education as shown in the movie…
Coming to the solution, first I’d like you all to go watch Aarakshan and see what money and politics does to suppress the fruitful discussions and promote the division and hatred in the community. And when you watch the second half, please do as I say. Imagine Amitabh as a leader who is above all communal stupidities, imagine Saif and Prateik as the representatives of lower and higher classes respectively, who are willing to work for social reforms under the guidance and leadership of an experienced leader who’s above all types of politics and believes in working for people, just like Anna Hazare. Imagine Deepika, Amitabh’s wife in the film and the tabela wala (sorry, can’t recollect their names) as those people, who cannot help directly in social reforms due to certain reasons and who are willing to help our heroes in their social reform works. Imagine the little children of various castes who get free education from our heroes, to be the youth of India whose future is yet unwritten, and finally, imagine Manoj Bajpai and the ministers as those people, who want the society to be unaware of the present issues and their reality; for which- they readily exploit the media and the twists and loopholes of laws, as is evident by the ban on release of the movie in several states and protets in many others. As soon as you do the replacements as suggested, you’ll know the solution to the problems if you are not below a 9th class student’s intellectual level, and if you are willing enough to sacrifice the trivial selfish thoughts of yourselves to work for the country and the social reforms. Another scene where the solution is explained is when Kavita talks to Prabhakar Anand about reservation toards the end of the first half.
To conclude, reservation is an inefficient tool for social reforms to bring together those who cannot cope up with the development due to financial, social and technical issues. Treat the financial, social and technical issues properly and you need not have a reservation policy anymore, but don’t forget to keep them with you, who already were, so that they don’t lag behind for others. that precisely is the permanent solution to the problem, not reservation. The current policies are based on good intention and not so good ideas. The day all kind of children- irrespective of the social class, are educated through an equally good system of education, the social differences will vanish ultimately leading to a society free of divisive differences and upliftment of country’s overall condition alongwith disappearance of problems like illiteracy, injustice, poverty and health problems. We have yet to go a long way ahead for this. And we have to ignore the politics over this issue to be actually working for the achievement of this ultimate goal.
*Madhur Vijay Anand
