Rhetoric, as a tool to inspire public sentiment in favour or against a particular ethos, has long been in practice. Mark Antony’s Friends, Romans and Countrymen outlines, perhaps, most vocally and definitively, the power and reach of rhetoric. The burning house of Brutus is a lingering memory in the minds of the readers even as Brutus is fighting a lost war against monarchy in the shadow of a patriotic rhetoric.
Reality is juxtaposed to rhetoric. Reality demands cool assessment of things around. Contrary to rhetoric, reality is cool, uninspiring and unambiguous in nature. The quiet lullaby of a wild brook against the stormy plains of Troy . Rhetoric defies logic, reality pursues it .
The post modern civilisation is not only an age of post truth, it’s also an age of rhetoric. Advertisements, bill boards, glow sign boards and, even the harangue of the political leaders, all account for the rhetoric, a convenient tool to brush the dust under the carpet.
It remains for the history to count the skeletons in the cupboard of the leaders like the British PM whose passionate rhetoric in the House of Commons justifying brutal attack on Iraq in collusion with the US in the 90’s . What was termed as the gulf war , was, indeed, a genocide of the innocents and their assertive leader Saddam Hussain .
If it is winter, can spring be far behind? Wondered Shelly ! If it’s in the West, can East be far behind?
It took India less than a decade to pick the bits and pieces of the value of the empty rhetoric to instigate, manipulate and digress people’s attention from the reality of the hunger, malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, gender and caste bias to the non issues like temple, communalism and mutual suspicion and hatred.
The modern tools of social media and internet were used to their hilt to wage a war on reality which is unheard of in the history of mankind. The results were soon obvious. A clutch of criminals assumed power by sheer deceit and untruth . Eclipse camp to stay and vultures hovered over the battlefield in anticipation of the dead . The most heinous criminals advocated for turning adversity into opportunity in its most hellish sense. A country, galloping into 21st Century with hope, ambition and youth was saddled with the most illiterate, villainous and retrograde in the lot . The middle class, the servile intelligentsia, the judiciary, the press , every one of them threw their weight behind these unrepentant criminals.
Sounds rhetorical , eh ! Might be . There comes times when rhetoric has to be countered with rhetoric, the hollowness of the one to be punctuated by the needle of reason and reality which turns the other into a ball of cactus.
Today’s address to the nation has catapulted Modi to the highest echelons of primordial stupidity which has erstwhile found its ample manifestation in his eventful life. Endowed with the rarest asinine quality, this unabashed liar and fool has transgressed the boundaries of time and space to assert himself as the greatest dunce human civilisation has ever toiled to produce.
We’re a proud nation to be led by this enigmatic donkey as we’re also a nation of donkeys. In this vast kingdom of dunces, we beat thalis and light candles and pray in unison, ‘ Lead kindly light’ , while Universal Darkness Buries All !
Good Bye India, you are cursed to die and rightfully so.
[ प्रतिभा एक डायरी स्वतंत्र ब्लाॅग है. इसे नियमित पढ़ने के लिए सब्सक्राईब करें. प्रकाशित ब्लाॅग पर आपकी प्रतिक्रिया अपेक्षित है. प्रतिभा एक डायरी से जुड़े अन्य अपडेट लगातार हासिल करने के लिए हमें फेसबुक और गूगल प्लस पर ज्वॉइन करें, ट्विटर हैण्डल पर फॉलो करे… एवं ‘मोबाईल एप ‘डाऊनलोड करें ]
