What I like about Neha Singh Rathore is that she’s figured out that it is the Upper Caste Hindus (specifically in the Ganges basin, but generally all-India) who need to lead this fight which others can only support and follow, because it is their mistake that the country is paying for now. Indeed, it is their mess to clean up, and they need to take charge of the fightback. We cannot expect the minorities and the Dalits to clean our shit anymore, literally and figuratively. Time to do our own housekeeping, and hope that we are forgiven by those most affected by our mistakes and delusions of Vishwaguruness.
To become world leaders, to have others listen to and want to emulate us, to be able to lead the progress of civilisation, one has to become capable of making it happen by first making it happen at home. All else is just hot gas. We cannot want recognition in the future for whatever our past has been without any reference to our present. We need to kick these clowns out, replace them with someone reasonable (note that I did not say we need some genius, brilliant, perfect person as PM and perfect MPs with a perfect cabinet; I am willing to settle for reasonable, decent, humans who are more or less afraid of the Constitution and the people of India), and then work our way up from there.
More importantly, it is those that messed this up that need to be the first to stand up and be counted. Yes, I am looking at you, you educated, social media savvy, upper caste, top 3-percenter. It was you and people like you that influenced the poor and the oppressed to vote with their emotions rather than their heads. It is time to use the same influential tactics to correct your mistake. Like Ms Rathore.
Please rest assured that we are no longer on the trajectory where success and recognition were imminent and it was merely a matter of time. We are now like the CEO-Minus-Two who has been demoted to an Assistant General Manager, if not an intern outright, and must work their way back slowly and steadily within the organisation to regain past glory, before even thinking of rising further to great heights. We need to calibrate how we measure success and have goals and standards more appropriate to the lower station we find ourselves reduced to because of these lost years, which may take decades, if not generations to earn back.
We might do well to remember Rancho in 3 Idtios who says, ‘काबिल बनो, कामयाबी झक मारकर पीछे आएगी|’
