Denial and self-deception in Indian society.

Rahul’s speech, its substance, historical importance, delivery style, timing, extempore nature, or richness of rhetoric does not matter to the majority of this nation.

Indeed, I personally know of highly educated, highly qualified, highly placed (some in the government and some in private sector), well-to-do, privileged-by-birth individuals who are thorough professionals in their jobs, family-types, generally emotionally stable, and usually well-intentioned in their approach to everything else in life, talk disparagingly of Rahul as intellectually challenged, inarticulate, and juvenile (and not in isolation, but in comparison to Narendra) despite the enormous data available in the public domain of it being the exact opposite.

They are not blind to reality, let me rush to add. Over the past 7-8 years, their blinkers have slowly been removed and they are unable to square the circle about most things they believed then and see now. They are even convinced that the claim of ‘nothing good has happened in 70 years’ is hollow (they may make an excuse that things have happened, but could have been better, and so on, excuses that even they know are weak), that the economy has tanked in reality, and that in every parameter, whether education, health, infrastructure, finance, hunger, poverty, employment, defence, foreign policy, home affairs, consumer protection, justice, or anything that matters, this government, with this man at its helm, has not just failed but the nation now stands at a place that if it were not for the serendipity of the worldwide pandemic, there wouldn’t even be a fig leaf left to hide its pathetic, shameful, and tragic state, and that this government has had the brute majority and the total cooperation (indeed via appropriation and usurpation) of all the arms of a government in power and have no excuse but to lay claim to anything other than the responsibility and blame for the sad state of affairs as they exist now.

So, what makes them clutch to the falsehood that Rahul is somehow an inept or unsuitable candidate for PM? You guessed it, but let me explain. There is one area where they think this government has ‘performed’ to expectations: social harmony.

This is a ridiculous claim but bear with me for a moment. They claim religion-based riots have decreased, indeed reduced to zero. They claim minority appeasement has stopped completely. They claim Muslim women are being freed from the shackles of their oppressive religion. They claim the long-persecuted, meek, and tolerant Hindu is getting his just dues. And the aggressive, openly defiant, universally feared and wooed Mussalman, his just desserts. They think that regardless of the hardships they are personally facing, the average good Indian (aka UC Hindu) has gained in the long run and that this return of self-confidence and self-esteem will bear fruit in the near future, washing away any losses in other ‘unimportant’ areas as mentioned above (economy, employment, health, education, etc.) and India will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes (which they agree we are now reduced to).

But if we let an Italian family, controlled by the Pope, bankrolled by the Zionists, and led by a former barmaid’s unintelligent, druggie Catholic son born to a Muslim father come into power, our glorious, all-knowing, eternal, million-year-old civilisation will be lost forever. And they believe this with all their hearts (indeed, you’d be surprised at how many falsehoods they believe deeply in; here’s a starter kit: Priyanka is schizophrenic, Rahul is a drug user, Sonia is the richest person in the world, the Vatican has given the INC targets to convert Indians, and I am not even touching the tip of the ice-berg here). Even if none of the data they have in their possession supports any of this. Even if this is not just wrong, it is in the category of ‘not even wrong.’ Even if a cursory research effort using the most basic of mobile phones plus an internet connection should within a few hours, if not minutes, be enough for them to see the facts.

Why don’t they do this most basic of research? They are hardly stupid in the traditional sense. Then? Why do they not trust their own senses? Or the various media outlets in and outside India that are still reasonably presenting facts? Or their own education? Or their intellect even? Because they have been blinded, and the PR machine that whoever (whether it was Pramod Mahajan or Amit Shah or Prashant Kishore is immaterial to this argument) built has created such an illusory hallucination not just in their minds, but their very beings, their souls and spirits, that they will be unable to handle the truth, even if they were to finally recognise it. Their minds will implode and their internals will turn into mush. They will cease to exist in the spiritual and temporal sense, because the base and the very foundation of their identity will be taken away, vanishing in a puff of smoke.

I used to wonder at the completely dud ‘revelation’, almost an anti-climax, of that Dan Brown bestseller, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ (spoiler alert) as to why, even if Jesus was indeed married and Mary Magdalene was his wife and they had a child and the bloodline was still alive, it should be a truth that will wipe away the legitimacy of the Church or cause a worldwide spiritual earthquake or destroy the social foundations of the Western civilisation, as Dan claims. However, since I knew how religion has occupied the human mind and how deeply it has infected it, I could understand and appreciate just how painful it could be to have the entire foundation of one’s existence destroyed by a revelation that the Son of God Himself has a living progeny in the 21st century. This (my befuddlement at why this should be that big a deal) may not be so easily understood by Christians, especially Catholics. But, to non-Catholics, this seems like a non-issue. Because to them, the Jesus-as-Son-of-God concept wasn’t central to their existence anyway.

So, imagine, if you will, a large swathe of Indian society, all of them with not just the tools to see the truth, but actually living and working in the real world where very little is or can be hidden from plain view, especially when things are so tits-up as they are at the moment in India, all of them seeing the reality, smelling it, hearing it, tasting it, touching it, but refusing to acknowledge it for the fear of then having to rearrange their entire lives around it, and so, not just content but also choosing to live in denial, self-deception, and ignorance. And you will see why Rahul will never be PM.

Which is, frankly, our loss. Not his.

P.S: I almost forgot. Other than the Muslim and Catholic evangelists converting people and desecrating their religion, these people are equally worried about the Dalits getting more than is ‘their due’, of which they claim they have already taken more than strictly was their right, and that reservations, the greatest bugbear this slice of society has, are responsible for whatever shit this country finds itself in today. Let me tell you something funny about this: In my recent conversations, some of these ‘observations’ have come from army men (3rd or 4th generation ones), who have proudly commanded the same unit as their fathers before them did (as did their grandfathers and so on) as per the tradition of the Indian Army where you get a preference to join, and later command, the same unit as your father. All of these army men are, of course highly professional and very successful, indeed so much so that their children are all planning to study abroad (because the Indian education system is really shit, you see). But when they present their views about reservations in the most non-ironic and serious way possible (even before their third drink, which is normally the marker to stop taking anyone seriously), one cannot but worry about this country, while agreeing with them that the education system (of which they are a product, and which has obviously taught them nothing) is indeed shit.