An open letter to Mr. Arvind Kejriwal

Dear Arvind,

It was really surprising, if not shocking, to see you shouting angry slurs at the BJP and Mr. Modi on national TV and Twitter. I really thought that you learned your lesson from your horrible outburst against Mr. Prashant Bhushan and Mr. Yogendra Yadav, which was revealed immediately after your party's spectacular victory in the Delhi assembly elections. We all can disagree with others or even can have serious differences of opinion on various matters or criticize each other very strongly without being abusive towards each other. I was under the impression that maybe finally after that mistake you learned to control your anger, at least in public. But it seems that lesson is long forgotten and you are back with your "angry young man" avatar that has very little regard for choice of words while expressing his anger. I agree that you have complete freedom to say whatever you want, after all, the right of freedom of expression comes with the right to offend, but I never imagined that you would take it to the extent that it would sound like abuse. Frankly speaking, my love affair with AAP ended long back, immediately after you decided to resign after 45 days of your brief tenure as Delhi CM. I should accept that I was attracted to your political party because of the presence of a wide variety of people from different backgrounds who don't necessarily subscribe to a single ideology. It was an interesting mix and generated some hope in people like me that maybe people with different sets of ideas can also come together and create something unique that can challenge traditional norms of Indian politics. I must also accept that you guys managed to do that, but that phenomenon was very short-lived. I still agree that your party is somewhat different than all other political parties in India, but that difference is very minute and the gap is narrowing day by day. It still is somewhat different, and I hope it remains like that.

Now, coming back to this particular incident, I agree that Mr. Modi or the central NDA government misused power in their hand. I also agree that CBI was in the past and still today is used as a tool to settle political scores or strike political deals, but didn't you already know all this? Didn't you voluntarily sign up for this job and willingly enter the murky arena of Indian politics after knowing all these facts about predatory and dirty tactics used by central governments to intimidate their opposition? Or somehow you believed that these things won't happen with you and your government? Assuming that even if Mr. Modi or the BJP showed their cowardliness and vengeance, why you didn't show your bravery and sensible nature by facing that inquiry or raid like any common citizen of India? Why do you think that your office is so special that CBI needs to get your permission to raid it? DO they do this if they want to raid any common person's home or office? If according to you, Mr. Modi is a coward or a psychopath then who are you? A brave CM who is crying foul just for a single raid conducted on his office? Or is it the case that as a CM of Delhi, you expect to be treated differently than any other citizen of India? I still remember that you and your party as well as most leaders of other political parties saying on multiple occasions that you all are servants of the common people of India. Especially, you and your party claim to be against the VIP culture. But it seems this rhetoric is only true until you guys win the election and get the power, once you are in government then you all become those VIPs, expect some special treatment, and start behaving like a privileged entity who is above the law. I think you know this, but in case you forgot let me remind you that many common people in India go through these ordeals of search, raids, and arrests every day and there is no one to help them. Many of them go through this as a consequence of their criminal acts but believe me, many are put through this for no fault of theirs, but they all go through this, and hope that the system will do justice to them. They believe in the same system of which you are also a part now, even though the system fails them most of the time. They don't ask for any special treatment. What do you have to say now about the VIP culture and everyone should be treated in the same way? I know, that now you or your supporters will argue that then why any other CM's office was not raided or why some other scam was not investigated. I agree that there are often selective investigations and political vendettas in many cases, but I am sure you expected this. People are raising questions about these things and these things should be questioned, but not the way you are doing now. Also, if there are some allegations against one of the officers in your office, then why not investigate him? Why put conditions that first investigate X and Y, and then come to me or my staff? What happened to the claim that we will not tolerate any corruption or shelter any corrupt officer? Was it just a chunavi jumla, a gimmick to win the election, just like your esteemed opponents do in every election? If it was, then at least let people know about it, so they stop thinking that you and your party are any different than others.

If you expected that nothing of this sort would happen to you or that your political opponents wouldn't play any dirty games with you or they would deal with you using kid gloves or that politics would change overnight, then I must say that I am amazed by your naiveness. Similar things have happened in the past and I am sure they will happen in the future also, but it is you who promised to bring the change of culture, but it seems that now you are trying really hard to fit right into that same culture which you opposed as an activist. Your choice of words was not only wrong, but I am sure it was disheartening for many of your supporters to hear these things coming from you. It puts you in the same line of people who called you a traitor, Pakistani agent, bhagoda, naxal, and whatnot. I am sure you must be enjoying their company as you really tried very hard to be part of that group. Those people also used abusive language and displayed a very low level of personal vendetta and what you did is no different. I would not have bothered to write this mail a few months back, but recently I thought your government was back on track as you guys were really doing some good work, initiating discussions about relevant topics like pollution and air quality of Indian cities, but then this happened. It is like going 5 steps forward and 10 steps backward.

I don't want to make my letter too long and too preachy. I am also not here to tell you what to do and what not to do, I am sure you know this better than me. I just raised a few questions and I hope you bother to think about them and introspect a little. Let me end by citing a very relevant example for you, I am sure you know the name of Sachin Tendulkar. This man is considered a great cricketer not just for the number of records he broke or runs he scored but also for his temperament, consistency, sincerity, and on-field behavior. There are equally great players as far as statistics or records are concerned from his era or eras before and after him, many of them are very aggressive not only while playing cricket but also while dealing with other players on the field, and some of them are even known to be extremely abusive during their on-field behavior. Sachin is different from all those because he never engaged in on-field verbal spats, it is not that he was not abused or people never tried to intimidate him or he was not targeted, opponents from all teams tried all sorts of tactics but Sachin answered all that not with his mouth, but with his bat by scoring runs. His performance answered those insults thrown at him, no doubt that he needed to produce very high-quality performance consistently to deal with on-ground sledding, and this is one of the reasons he is considered a great cricketer. I hope this example inspires you to do something different from now onward. Because it is of no use just to claim that you are different, you also need to show that by your behavior.

All the very best and take care.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Culture of hooliganism

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the news that the situation in my hometown Pune is critical because some objectionable material about Shivaji Maharaj was circulated in social media. I was not surprised by the circulation of such material but was surprised by the extreme reaction to this in Pune. It is shocking to see that a city like Pune which remained calm even during the Babri mosque demolition and many other sensitive incidents is behaving like this. I guess the spread of social media hatred finally caught up with Pune. People use social media for so many reasons, some people use it to spread good messages, and discuss valid and relevant issues; at the same time, some people use it to circulate junk like morphed photos of people. Their only intention in circulating anything like this is to create social disturbance and such violent reactions fulfill their expectations. Actually, these people who think that they are protecting someone's honor are playing in the hands of those antisocial elements. These two sides help each other to serve their purposes. First, some anti-social elements release something which is derogatory in nature and then some people act exactly according to the script to make a big deal out of it and create havoc. Instead of condemning the actions or opposing them in a nonviolent way they destroy public property and disrupt public life. What do they achieve by doing all this? Nothing. They just waste public money and time. But these people fail to understand this simple thing and keep on making the same mistakes again and again. This has become so regular pattern for some political parties, so regular that it has become their habit, they don't miss any single opportunity to exploit any such incident. 

This culture of hooliganism is not good for any society. Especially for a country that is aspiring to become a superpower. Freedom of expression is a very important right in any developed society. I agree that freedom of expression also comes with some responsibility but it also comes with the right to offend. In any developed society, there should be ample scope for expressing offensive things without any threat of violence. Actually feeling offended or angry about something is not that bad but that feeling should be used to propagate any violence. Silencing the messenger is not the proper way to fight the message, we have to tackle only the message even if we don't like it not the messenger.

I don't understand how disturbing public life by violent acts or destroying public property serves any purpose. How does destruction help in nursing hurt feelings? How more hatred can be the answer to hatred? Won't such violent reactions serve the purpose of people who intend to create social disturbance by spreading rumors or objectionable material?  Why to help them? I think now it is time for everyone to think about how to tackle these types of situations peacefully. For every objectionable material release 100s of messages that portray positive things about that person, rather than getting offended try spreading your own message. This will automatically negate the efforts of people who are trying to spread negative messages. If those antisocial elements see that their tactics to create social disturbance are not working they will automatically stop. By reacting to such incidents in a violent way people are making these posts or materials more popular. These incidents help to publicize such acts and encourage these antisocial elements. We need to realize that no one can insult or hurt our feelings until we allow them to do so. No post, photo, or anything can insult a person like Shivaji Maharaj, people like him are an inspiration for many by trying to insult such people some people show their own level of understanding, and it doesn't reflect anything about these towering personalities. Everyone has the right to study, analyze, and even criticize anything and anyone, criticism is not an insult and should not hurt or offend anyone. We should be mature enough to handle criticism in a peaceful way. Once we learn these simple things then we will stop getting offended by the stupid acts of some people and such violent reactions will stop. It is a must to get rid of this culture of hooliganism, after all, we come from a country where Gandhi used nonviolent methods to fight the mighty British Empire.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Listening- a very important gift

Listening is one of the very basic skills that most humans possess, but how many of us think that it's one of the very important qualities that we have? We all love to speak and express our opinions. Many of us take classes or courses to improve our public speaking skills, but not many of us are patient enough when it comes to listening. If we see our development from childhood, most of us first learn to listen and then slowly we learn to speak. We are born with the power of listening, without that it's very difficult to learn the art of speaking. As life progresses we forget that listening is an art and a very important quality to have, all of us focus heavily on speaking, and expressing ourselves but totally ignore the listening part. We take it for granted that whatever we speak people will listen and very often forget that we also need to listen to others.

Many times it happens that we are in some meeting or in conversation with some person or listening to a song, physically we are there, but our mind is somewhere else, we don't realize when one song ends and another begins or we wake up only when people start clapping at the end of seminar. So, it seems it's very difficult for most of us to focus our attention in one place while listening. Nowadays we love to multitask and we like to check our emails, update our Facebook page, or browse the internet while listening to seminars, sitting in a classroom, or even chatting with our loved ones. We are almost sure that listening does not require our full attention and many things can be done while listening, but the funny thing is when someone else does the same while we are talking then we get upset and blame them for not paying 'full attention' to whatever we are saying. Very often a nice discussion turns into a fierce argument when both parties involved in the discussion stop listening to each other and try to force their own opinion on the other person. One can see that a lack of patience (and listening requires a lot of it) can create troubles anywhere and believe me practice of listening improves our patience a lot.

Listening offers many benefits, one of the major ones is it improves our knowledge, you can rarely get in trouble because of listening, speaking can land us in trouble if we are not careful with our words but listening won't do that. It also improves our patience. I think we all will agree to the fact that it requires a great deal of patience to listen to what others say. Most of the time it's very difficult to control the urge to interrupt the person in between to refute his/her argument and prove them wrong, this attitude often turns most of the discussions into arguments and both people involved in this act miss the great opportunity to learn from each other.

I believe that we all need to work on our stamina to listen to what others say. If we learn to listen to each other I believe we will start understanding each other better, whenever we listen to anything attentively and with patience it is possible to understand many minute things that we might miss and many times these minute things make all the difference between understanding and misunderstanding. The easiest thing we can do to avoid most of the misunderstandings in our lives is to listen patiently and then think over it before responding. It's not very difficult to do but also not as easy as it sounds. It can definitely solve many of our problems, it's worth trying.

Thanks for reading and please share your views.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)