Travelure

By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer

You will not find the word egological in the dictionary. We have just made it up after hearing the speech of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who delivered it at the UN General Assembly after some delegates had walked out in protest. The protests did not deter Netanyahu one little bit. He spoke with confidence as if he had every right to project his point of view. It is clear that he believed that Israel had an inherent duty to crack down and kill enemies of the state. He said that his formidable secret service, MOSSAD, had eliminated those responsible for killing Israeli citizens, the people who had replaced the original conspirators and the people who had replaced the replacements.

When we heard Netanyahu speaking we thought of the holocaust planned and executed by the Nazis in which countless Jewish people were herded into cattle cars, off-loaded into planned extermination centres where they were slaughtered in gas chambers and then cremated. Their only crime was that they belonged to the Jewish faith.

But then the Nazis were not Muslims, so why did they hate the Jews? The Nazis made a scapegoat of the Jews because it is the nature of right-wing fascism to find someone to blame for their problems. The Jews because of their thrift, hard work and prosperity became easy targets for the Nazis to blame.

We see this happening in India in a different form. This is very clear that certain groups of right-wing activists have been encouraged to take the law into their own hands and this has created cow vigilantism. If the state cannot enforce the protection of bovines from birth to death, then does the government have any right to force old bovines to die a cruel death by eating plastic from garbage dumps?

The people of India are aware that from the moment a political party comes to power the wealth of its politicians increases. They and their families flaunt this openly with expensive watches, sun-glasses and vehicles. Is it really necessary to tie up so many security personnel to guard our netas? Or to give them black- armoured bullet-proof imported vehicles?  Do these so-called “beloved of the masses” really need to be protected from the masses who love them?

Everywhere in the world all through time religion has always been a source of entertainment. In fact, in the temples of south of India ancient Dravidian religious practices have not been overwhelmed by Aryan influences, music, dancing, painting, sculpture and the arts in general are rooted in the ancient temples. It is the wisdom of these time-honoured practices which have been taken to the four corners of India by Guru Shankaracharya. This established the poly-culture of Hinduism. Priestly families exchanged places so that southerners preside over northern shrines and verse-versa.

There is an ancient wisdom locked in the jurisdiction of the Shankaracharyas that no amount of political raz-ma-tazz can obliterate.

Finally, we and every thinking Indian could be worried about what happens in the northeast of our land. We recall that gender-specific horrors inflicted by one community on the other started only after the visit of a senior politician. Coincidence?

Politics and religion, as we have said, form an explosive mixture. We in India have the world’s largest voting population. Our neighbours are, rightly worried at even at the slightest variation in voting patterns in our land. If our netas are seen to support religious fundamentalists of any sort, our neighbours will get very worried. Can this fear account for the seeming change of attitude among the people of Bangladesh?  Have they given too much importance to the activities of such groups as the Bajrang Dal? And see the right wing as a growing ogre?

After the last general elections, certain political formations have shown the crack in their financial foundations. Our neighbours are worried that, if the cracks increase, the organisations will crumble bringing down those around them.

Not every neta in our lands can radiate the self-confidence of Benjamin Netanyahu in the full flush of his honesty.

(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.) (The opinions and thoughts expressed here reflect only the authors’ views!).