Power, Manipulation and ... loads of things

<>Hey guys! So far whenever I’ve gone ahead and typed out a blog entry, it has mainly been out of compulsion- compulsions of filling blog- space, meeting up to my friends tag requests and listening to people shouting at me with- “Mridu when are you going to put up a new post???” the result is of course right here. I have all of 8 or 9 entries and that is pretty sad. But hey I write this blog because I wanna do it… not coz others want me to!! So I’ll post only when I feel like… from now on no more reminders taken! Huh! Now that perhaps means that I am gonna lose out on audience…ughgh. <>

Anyways… it’s a wonderful weather out there… so go to your terraces guys! I can’t. I feel cold the moment the temperature falls even by a few degrees… but that’s me- pseudo Punjabi cum pseudo Bengali… <>

I often wish that I could read all the books I feel like ding so…but alas! My slowness always interferes in my decisions and I end up just completing my course books! <>

However I think my course books are pretty much interesting too and I think the Indian Literature included in our course- barring Tagore of course (I was so bored reading Home & the World that I ended up writing a dumb li’l poem on tagore). I think the most interesting one is Ghashiram Kotwal by Vijay Tendulkar. Its something…even the others are for that matter… which really makes you think and you can link it up with so many issues and powerful figures in the recent world history. Am sure many of you must have heard about the play. It is quite famous and one of Tendulkar’s best works. <> Ghashiram talks about how a man who wants to seek revenge on the people and Brahmins of Mathura (he has come from Poona) because they have ill-treated him, rises to power and becomes the Kotwal by appeasing the deputy of the Peshwa- Nana Padhnavis in order to vent his anger. And this he does so capitulating on the Nana’s lustful cravings by actually pawning his own daughter… ughgh I am using Ashima’s (our professor) words! Now its quite disgusting that a person should do that. But nevertheless… he rises to power… and takes revenge on the Brahmins of Poona for sure. He is an atrocious man who does not really apply any discretion before punishing people in, to be frank, quite a gross manner. The people of course get sick and tired of his senseless atrocities, which not only enforce law & order but create an sense of threat within the city. Obviously they complain against him to the peshwa and Nana gets to know about this. Having no use of the Kotwal considering the fact that he has already made his daughter pregnant and she has died during childbirth, he decides to dispose him off. Proclaiming Ghashi to be a tyrant, he asks the mob to get rid off him and stone him to death. There … that’s the end of Ghashiram Kotwal.

Its rather ironic that the very person who gives him the post of the Kotwal, orders for his persecution. And the people of course think that the Nana is a just man- their savior. Its called deputationist politics where the person in power uses certain institutions to carry out tasks for him so the common man does not so the real perpetrator of the crime… when the need arises … u remove the men at the lower rungs… and there … u pacify the people for some time and become their savior, protector, an upholder of their rights… <>

If you look at American foreign policy, it somehow seems just the same. In fact it’s a fact that most of the times people in power capitalize on the vengeance, which resides in the minds of certain people. Its this vengeance which acts as an instrument of agency for these top rung people. Hey do you remember Godfather where Don Corleone is telling his son… ughgh what was his name... about the utility value of such people… people who are possessed with hatred towards the world. They are the ones who are unsympathetic in their dealings and know how to get work done, being devoid emotions and sentimentality of any sort. <>

And if any of you remember your class 10 world history (am sure u’d remember tid-bits… I do remember bits too even though I had PCMB in my +2), you might as well recall that when Hitler started subjugating Jews to all sorts of inhuman atrocities, the Americans were quite unconcerned. He was a rather useful man who would keep communism at bay and and not allow the Soviet Union to rise in power. However it was only when they realized that he and the Soviet have a pact of mutual non-aggression and further when he seemed to have strengthened so much that he could be capable of conquering of the Soviet or the England and pose as a dangerous rival to the Americans that they declared war against Hitler. It was not Hitler’s atrocities which concerned them in the very least, nor his conquering of the Hungary or France or even his attempt at Soviet for that matter. Finally personal gain and associated manipulation strategy seems to be the basis of American foreign policy.

I think one can see the same policy at work when one sees the Bush attacks on Iraq. Obviously it is oil and not Iraq that matters to them. However they capitalized on- 1) the interests of the other western nations in Iraqi oil… thus they would support his administration. 2) The unhappiness of the people of Iraq itself against Saddam and 3) the fact that Iraq was not quite popular with UN members, and thus created a façade of their possessing chemical weapons! The UN can be said to be ‘run by the USA’ for all practical purposes. There… we have dear Uncle Sam getting away with almost every move and still proclaim itself to be a savior of humanity. Though I doubt too many people buy that now… <>
So it is rather sad that people can turn into tyrants, to be used by others who can see their irrationality and those people don’t actually realize that by being insecure and wanting to vent anger on the world, they can become victims of their own doings. And in their cravings for revenge, it is not they who gain, and nor is it the world and society for sure (which is perhaps the worst victim), but the manipulative chaps who want to exercise larger control and always gain in this struggle for existence, who actually always gain and do so at their expense.