Two days ago, I was in a car going to watch a movie with my friend, his cousin and the latter’s wife. The cousin, a very highly qualified practicing physician, citizen of the USA, is visiting India to check on his ailing parents. He asked me why I used a cane. I explained my problem with my replaced and revised hip joints and the five surgeries that I have undergone.
He asked me other questions about my health as well, being genuinely interested, and on listening to me, said like a typical Indian would, that we cannot escape our Prarabdha. I whole heartedly agreed with him as would a Muslim Indian who would simply call it Kismet or a Christian Indian, Fate. Such commiseration is part of our culture and every day vocabulary.
Recently, a Minister in one of our states used the same metaphor to impress on an audience of Indians in the local language and syntax about Divine Justice and the Indian media and trolls went after him like this report did.
Such sensationalising ordinary every day language to fit into a so called secular approach to public life is a peculiar feature of our English language press whose audience laps it up leaving me to wonder about our English speaking two or so percent of population and their contact with our roots and our culture.
A senior leader of the now pathetic Indian National Congress party, Mr. Chidambaram tweeted, “Cancer is divine justice for sins’ says Assam Minister Sharma. That is what switching parties does to a person,” Mr. Chidambaram and his ilk are what are called ELIMs, English speaking Left Intellectual Mafia by the not so fluent in English ordinary Indians like me who are more comfortable in our native languages. Incidentally such Leftists here have no compunction whatsoever in exploiting not the left ideology that we have been following since the early nineties!
I must also share what the Minister in the storm had to say in reply to Mr. Chidambaram. His English is not quite Oxbridge because he is comfortable with his native language, but sends his message loud and clear.
“Sir, please do not distort. Simply I said that Hinduism believe in karmic law and human sufferings are linked to karmic deficiency of past life. Don’t you belief that too? Of course in your party I do not know whether Hindu philosophy can be discussed at all (sic).”
Quite why Mr. Sharma asks the question at the end of his tweet will take another blog post and I am perfectly willing to write on it if my readers want me to.