When I was younger , I used to dream – vividly and all the time,

I used to dream so hard that sometimes I would confuse them for memories

But real memories intrude now ,And they wont let me dream anymore

I used to dream of vast vistas of stunning landscapes ,I used to dream of breathtaking beauty

But now ,when I close my eyes , all I see are hovels and broken houses ,black soot and vile smoke

I used to dream of great friendships , bonds of brotherhood and undying loyalty

But now when I close my eyes , all I see are people I failed and people who failed me

I used to dream of love , of being somebody’s safe haven and finding one for myself

But now when I close my eyes , all I feel is pain and hurt and the rising bile of cynicism

I used to dream of adventures , of riding dragons and scaling peaks

But now when I close my eyes , all I see is my daily commute

I used to dream of being wise , of being endowed with an ageless and peerless foresight

But now when I close my eyes , all I can do is cringe at my never ending follies

I used to dream of a world of my own , a world of warmth and of kindness

But now when I close my eyes , all I can feel is the utter coldness of the world I live in

If only the dreams of my younger self could be the memories of my older one

I am scared now , really scared for I am beginning to forget my dreams

My dreams may be unreal but they give me sustenance ,

My memories are all too real and are poison

So everyday I pray , I plead and I beg the universe

Please give me my unreal dreams back , for I cannot bear to live with my real memories.

I talked elsewhere about how bigotry is becoming the new ‘wokeness’ in our country. Now the trouble with bigotry is that it is like a poison, a cancer of some kind. It refuses to stay ‘localized’. Once it gains admittance and entry it spreads to other areas.

It is essentially a way of thinking. And once you start adopting bigoted modes of thought , it will not take too long for that to become your default mode , your way of looking at the world.

That is why may be it is not surprising that we have many kinds of bigotry today -religion , language -you name it , we have it. Of course , some times attempts are made to package these – to present these arguments in a ‘refined’ fashion . But make no mistake -this is just vacuous “whataboutery” and still bigotry.

Given how negative an emotion and a mode of thinking bigotry is – it’s attractiveness has always surprised me. It dehumanizes those it targets , it denies them their own identity. It is tinged with hatred. Surely , the inside of a bigot’s head must not be a very pleasant place. Yet bigotry finds so many adherents.

Perhaps , one of the explanations is that it is an ‘easy’ way of thinking. The world is a complex place. The truth is nuanced and difficult to grasp. There is already so much cognitive load on all of us.

Under these circumstances , perhaps bigotry offers an easy way out. A bigoted mode of thinking is always characterized by facile and easy explanations of the world. There is hardly any nuance. Arguments are easy to grasp. You don’t care about the truth. You are just interested in self gratification.

Why bother understanding nuances , when there are facile conspiracy theories that have immediate appeal? Truth seeking is hard work. Being bigoted is easy.

Bigotry is also about identity reductionism. As Amartya Sen says, identity is a complex entity. We are not defined by our religion alone. Or our language alone. There are many things that make us up.

Bigotry denies this rich complexity , by reducing everything to one factor. In recent days , in our country that factor seems to be religion. It is easy to say that people from XX religion are a particular way or all people from YY religion are in danger.

We keep forgetting that there are various kinds of people amongst adherents of every religion- there are nutcases , there are fundamentalists , there are conservatives , there are the non practitioners , there are the devout, there are people who don’t care about their religion . That is true of every religion – Hindu , Muslim , Christian doesn’t matter.

Talking in terms of religious ‘blocs’ is ridiculous and dehumanizing to the say the least. That is what Bigotry does. It turns everything into a culture war.

Bigotry is causing some real , tangible problems in our country today – chief among them the ‘othering’ of minority religious communities.

There is another intangible problem that it is causing – an erosion of modes of thought. Disregard for the truth , impatience with nuance , lack of a scientific temper , irrationality -to name a few. Of course the cause and affect is neither clear nor linear. I think they just feed off each other.

This erosion in the right modes of thinking is equally dangerous. The biggest , most important battles are always fought in the realm of ideas.

Those of us who value diversity , appreciate complexity and nuance and are respectful of the truth should continue to tirelessly endeavor to defeat bigotry in all it’s forms.

I wrote a book!!!! My first long work of fiction in novel/novella form. Do check it out. Available on Amazon in e book form.

Here is an outline :

The Democratic Republic of Utopsia is a unique country. For one, the country is ruled by a dictator who is democratically elected. The Utopsians call him Mother. Two, all Utopsians are prohibited, by law, to hide their feelings.
They wear the HAART device at all times. Thanks to advances in wearable technologies and machine learning, this device simply assays their feelings from their bio mechanical indicators. Each of these devices is hooked to the FEELS NETWORK – a massive network of information on what each Utopsian is feeling and has ever felt. Combined with other information, this network is a veritable gold mine on Utopsian attitudes. Both Utopsian corporates and the government tap into this network to gauge people’s attitudes.
Maintaining this network is a specialized job. And a very profitable one. Only two companies in Utopsia are even qualified to win the contract to maintain this network – C.corp and D.corp. The requirement for winning the contract is simple – Root a belief amongst the Utopsians. Make 40% of Utopsians believe something that they didn’t believe in before.
Nysa , the newly appointed Chief Belief officer of D.corp is keen to win the contract for her company this year and make her mark. And she is successful in rooting a belief. Only , she is too successful – the consequences of which she could not have imagined.

A vile cloud hangs over the country. It is getting continuously impregnated by hatred -growing ever larger and darker. None of us would want to see this cloud bursting. Because if it does , it is only going to rain vile acid. Poison will pour upon us. And that will not be the end. It will only be the beginning of a cycle- dark clouds will form again , rain poison upon us again – this process will repeat till all that is left is ruin and wilderness. Our only hope is that this cloud is blown away by the winds of good sense.

It is the cloud of religious bigotry. We see today many ‘born again’ Hindus. They are hyper aggressively proud of their religion. They are easily offended – by just about everything – it is almost like they are looking for excuses to be offended. They are possessed of an irrational imagination – seeing conspiracies where none exist and almost all of them are animated by hatred – hatred of a kind that scares me.

I grew up in a very religious Hindu family. I count temple priests among my ancestors. My grandfather started his life as a temple priest before moving on to a more secular occupation. I have seen devout Hindus very closely. My Mother is one of them – extremely devout with a deep knowledge and a wide understanding of Hindu scriptures and philosophy. Yet she is no bigot. She is proud of her religion and culture , yet this pride is not of the aggressive and hostile variety. Her pride doesn’t come from a place of hypocritical superiority.

In fact , I have always found her taking a lot of pleasure in the similarities of different faiths. For instance , the similarities between Sufism and the Alwar tradition of SriVaishnavism is something she is overjoyed by. Finding God through love , song and dance and the breaking down of calcified hierarchies -is by itself inspiring. That different faiths seem to have arrived independently at similar humanistic conclusions is even more so.

The point is you can be a proud Hindu -proud of your religion and your culture -without being a Bigot. It is not that difficult. But today , a section of the population seems to be convinced that bigotry is the only way forward. That somehow different faiths cant co exist. That somehow , unless a hierarchy is established between different faiths , co existence is not possible.

Religious bigotry is the new ‘wokeness’ now. It is slowly becoming mainstream. It is being enabled by many with their “What-aboutery”. History is being twisted. Falsehoods are being presented. Atrocities are being invented. Dangers are being imagined. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a snack , seems to threaten us.

We will do well to remember -any country or society that lets religion and faith leave the private spaces of home and family and lets them enter public spaces invariably invites disaster and failure. Faith, by it’s very definition, is subjective and private. Faith and religion are not equipped to offer guidance and direction on how a modern , multi cultural society should be run. Because each faith has evolved in it’s own context ,under very specific set of conditions that made that particular faith amenable to it’s adherents. So when adherents of different faiths come together to co exist – they have to evolve rules of engagement on human and humane terms and based on the best of what each faith has to offer.

This is the very idea that India is based on. The very basis on which a complex ,interwoven social fabric has been stitched over the ages. Today , that very idea is in danger. Forces threaten to rend this fabric and once rent – there is no knowing how long it will take to put it back together again. It is now a battle of ideas and ideals. It is Humanism vs Bigotry.

Hatred is it’s own end. Hatred is it’s own object. However much we may try to convince ourselves that our hatred has particular , specific objects – it is a fire that burns the Hated and the Hater alike. Bigotry and Hatred are cancers that eat away at just about everything. Once given free rein they cant be controlled. Today it is religion , tomorrow it will be something else.

There are always people whose interest it is to see increasing levels of bigotry and hatred in a society. There will always be. However , these are invariably enabled by those that are silent -who say nothing , who don’t condemn. They may not be bigots themselves but these are the people who contribute to it’s growth the most.

The real villain of Nazi Germany was not Hitler. The real villains were the millions of ordinary Germans who chose to stay silent when the Jews were being demonized.

If you are silent , you are complicit. If you are silent , you are no better than the bigots and the hatemongers.