A Confession

Accumulated knowledge, ideas, thoughts, experiences make us what we are today. Wisdom that we gain, ideology and philosophy that we call our own are result of sometimes painstaking, sometimes effortless process of learning that starts at a very early age. All that we thus accumulate, makes our identity. As this is an ever ending process, we as thinking, learning human being keep changing till the last day of our lives.

And yet, there may be things that we hold dear and sacrosanct. Things that after a time, never really change. What we call values and ideology. And these constitute the core of our identity. We use these as touchstones for judging all other ideas and actions of self and others. These core values and ideology give us a unique identity.

When these core values are challenged, we feel uncomfortable. This is identity crisis. We can’t let that happen and must defend them with all our might. A defeat there will lead to a void that threatens our whole existence.

Recently, it has been an identity crisis like situation for me. First, it was embarrassing to know that all along I was being misguided and used by whole bunch of communist propagandists who claimed to be historians. Unfortunately all I ever read are Romila Thapar, D N Jha, R S Sharma, Bipan Chandra and some NBT (Mukherjees) and NCERT books (Adding to the shame is the realization that I carry with me many of those books even today). Fortunately, however, I never liked Mediveal India so could skip Irfan Habib and hence avoid the mortifying shame of following a communist who is also a Muslim!

(I must confess that when my daughter last week asked about a good book on ancient history, I was totally confounded as I could not recollect a single name other than these abhorrent communist thugs. I know there can be no excuse for such a despicable ignorance.)

Then, few days back I was told that Chandrachud, former CJI who I always admired as a champion and crusader for equality and justice, was a congress stooge or worse! Someone who, to use a friend’s words, ‘sold his soul’ to Indira Gandhi during the emergency. Never mind that he was made CJI by Morarji Desai government. The guy must have bought it back and resell to Morarji bhai.

Today I come to know that Padgaonkar was a congresswala! Now, he and Rajendra Mathur (Navbharat Times) were the two persons I grew up with. Most of my social-political thoughts were shaped back then by these two persons. I am wondering if Mathur was a congress guy or a communist. He died long back so this issue may remain unaddressed.

The question, however, that bothers me is what I am? A congressi? communist? Worse of the two, may be, as all these persons I tried so hard to emulate all my life turn out to be dishonest cheats camouflaging as something else. That is the identity crisis like situation I referred to.

A life wasted on these false ideas and ideals. A socio-political identity that turns out to be a mere mask. Surely a condemned life mine is.