People are respectful for Great people. Like in our own country,India has a lot of Great men or women whom we pay obeisence to, respect albeit formally,and celebrate their birthdays or death days with holidays. For us, except a few men who have indelible mark over us,like Gandhi or Nehru, or of course, if you know some local leader who has done great for the community you live in, are really respected in that you remember them in your thoughts on the day of the jayanti or some other time during your discussions. Otherwise, suppose there's some other holiday or jayanti of some other leader we know little of, then its fine. We are happy with the day off we got from our workplace or school or college or whatever we are doing(except if you are in IT for a foreign client, there you can't afford even these little pleasures).
I mean to ask, why are we respectful of these guys. Its like yeah everybody knows that he's great. So I know too that he's great. I am not saying that he's not great. But heck, so let him be. Why are am I remembering this person? Haven't the thought crossed your mind for once, what's the purpose of respecting some guy who's been great. I know its a good thing to respect the great people. But how is it a good thing.. We are so used to this habit of our elders to whom this habit was passed on from their elders that we are 'supposed' to respect.But what's the purpose of this good thing. Is it serving any purpose?? Maybe it is..... But do we know?? I don't frankly..
But I feel there must be some purpose, ain't there?? These people have just become like those Gods we pray to. Why do we pray to them?? Because everybody is supposed to do so..But there must be some reason..Otherwise the whole community isn't dumb to do it right since how many generations...
It all boils down to this...... We need to know the reason for doing this respecting chore that we have been thrust with....Otherwise shouldn't do it...Because it becomes a burden when you are doing something without knowing why!!
Well you see, its actually wrong to suppose somebody's great or somebody's God. You have the right to know why. Because unless you do know, or better realize, you aren't truly respecting him, from your heart, you are just faking it. That's like doing nothing at all. It can have repurcussions you know...like those in RSS, and the dumb guys of MNS, who think they know what God is?? or they are actually respecting God by forcing others to be like them. Its not done that way. They are a group of people who suffer from the problem that they don't know what they are doing..But they are supposed to do it..Just like their elders. But you see, you should know the reason and then do it. So, you do it from the heart. Otherwise, you are bound to become a hardliner. (This is just right...I don't care the hell what the world thinks). And these people get easily influenced by somebody bent on politically taking advantage of them. Like their leader. I don't say that you shouldn't follow your tradition, but understand it side by side. Its not great or difficult to understand to live by your culture. Neither is it great if you are doing that, nor is anybody not doing it bad. Its a matter of choice. Of course, a guy loses out on a lot when he leaves his culture. So he will come back when he sees that. If you force him, he will not come back. Because then he's afraid of u. But show him that he has a lot to gain by coming into your culture AND that he has a choice to do it or not. And he will come to u. This was digressing from my point. I was showing a repercussion of not knowing your leader or God AND trying to respect him.
I am not saying that there's a sure-shot definition for the greatness of these guys. Or that, it can be explained in short, and even if its possible, still tougher more to understand the same. But hell, man, its rather at least possible to keep a sense of inquiry rather than just accepting.What I am saying here is not something you can go and tell an MNS guy and he will understand. Of course, he won't. But if an MNS guy himself is reading this, patiently enough, not to tear it apart, he has the chance to understand. This is not anti MNS propoganda. I am not even using u as any scape goat. I am just trying to explain your state of mind and using that trying to make my point. My point is....
We need to try to understand why these guys who we 'know' as being great, were great, if that's what they truly were. Just you need that sense of inquiry. The reason isn't to obtain a guide to how to be 'Great'. I mean what's the ultimate point of being great by one person, and a mass of people respecting him for being 'great'. That's something I don't say doesn't exist but I want to know what it is. It would be good if I could know what drove these guys to be what they became, achieve what they achieved, that's what I am trying to arrive at. If the aim to remember these guys is to get back the driving force that drove the nation towards our independence, then its definitely a profitable venture. But are we really able to do that is not that I care about. I care about whether we are really assimilating those facts. Simply put, why were these guys great? Did they eat a different variety of foodgrains, or slept in some magical bed, or had some operation done on their brains to make them so great,huh?? I will respect these guys if they were something of special sort only if they were useful for me right?? That's what our gut feeling tells us, we are not going by what our parents,teachers have told us, to respect them!!Why, because he did this, he did that!! Ok fine! what am I supposed to do. Why I am writing all this bullshit is because I read an article in TOI today in edit page by a man called Arvind panagariya who is sad. Poor guy, he needs a change I think. He's sad because the remarkable period in modern India's history that is our freedom movement is in danger of being forgotten. Fine, right, absolutely correct, we are on the verge of forgetting something we don't understand why we are doing, maybe we are missing something that's good. But hell, why would we try to remember something that's like a burden of history books on our brains, that's just a lot of syllabus and nothing else.
It was fine that he's sad(the writer of that article) because of this genuinely serious problem, of us forgetting our heritage that is our freedom struggle's history but just look how is he proposing the solution. He's says we have failed to give due recognition to the heroes of the independence movement and we need to build a grand museum to do so, and have pavilions for this movement and pavilions of that movement. Well, sir, my most respectful gratitude to you for having being sad for this problem, but sir, I feel that the matter is not getting recognition that is at the root of the problem, but, the problem is, we don't understand the recognition because you are not recognizing him, you are idolizing him, just like we are idolizing our Gods. You see, it would be a better idea to tell us the secret of those great guys. We don't need to be told again and again, that at such and such date, such&such great guy did this or that great thing. Tell us, instead, why he, instead of those millions that were following him, was the leader, what did he came to know, while living among us, that we couldn't understand while living around him,huh?? Scrap those museums, build us some social security for this great nation and allow them a standard of living. We the people are not great by ourselves, but our deeds make us so, said some guy. But man, why did he do them, did his mother tell him to? Or did he sleep walk through it all man..... Those are the things that matter, if you can tell us, explain us, or even have time for us out of your busy schedule of seeing over the construction of that great museum of yours, please let us know..
