For those of you still vague on this topic, a martyr is someone who makes great sacrifices for their beliefs and is persecuted or killed for their cause. We are all familiar with the 'shahids' who laid down their lives for our country and the ideals they stood for. The martyrs we recognize today are worlds away from the textbook figures we learnt about in school. The tumultuous events of our recent past have contributed indiluting the value of this title and ensuring that it is now associated entirely with economic entitlement, rather than the prestige and gratitude bestowed by an indebted nation.
Our list of martyrs is quite astonishing in its scope and inclusion with different kinds of categories and all manner of deaths from accidental ones, suicides to traffic mishaps making it onto the list. As if that wasn't farcical enough already, we now have a coterie of halfwits who have decided that a gangster's name should be added to it. Bravo!
The gangster in question is, of course, 'Ghainte' whose life and death would have fitted very neatly into any formulaic Bollywood script of this genre. Gangster is used by politicians to do their dirty work, attains money and notoriety (complete with a goofy alias) before having a change of heart and reforming himself only to realize very late that he is just as expendable as the others.
Muscle power is a feature of many 'democracies' around the world and the lawmakers advocating for that ludicrous proposal I alluded to make no pretences in hiding their affiliation with the don. This isn't really a surprise to me or to those familiar with political systems, but what really gets my goat is the call for him to be declared a martyr. Are they serious?
The symbiotic relationship between gangster and lawmaker can perhaps explain their lack of morality, but one really has to question the intelligence of the people who voted for these buffoons in the first place. Why should you and I end up contributing our hard and legitimately earned money to pay the family of someone who spent his life terrorizing and profiting from ordinary citizens like us? Never mind recovering all that ill-gotten wealth,these people want to make sure he fleeces us
posthumously too.
It really is just like a government job, only unofficial. And here we are, the stupid ones thinking that crime doesn't pay when it's so obvious that it does, not only when you're alive but long after you've gone too. Why stop at declaring him a martyr? We should go a step further and bestow upon 'Ghainte' the status of national luminary. This
will ensure that our kids get the message to stop studying and stake an early claim in the organized crime scene. After all it ensures money, power, fame, and even respect going by the recent clamour, there by providing us with all that we aspire to have.
It's not just the lawmakers in Kathmandu that have a copyright on absurdity because if anyone can come up with statements or ideas that are equally, if not more, preposterous it is our Madhesi leaders. While our legislators here seek to make light of the spirit of martyrdom, our friends down south go further and take thismockery to a whole new level. Our (real) martyrs must be turning in their graves (if they were in one) at their cheap talk of offering five million to those willing to martyr themselves for the cause.
This beggars belief not only because their supposed 'cause' changes every fortnight or has a million variations on the same theme, but the fact that these leaders even have to offer money–money that they don't have from a Pradesh that doesn't exist – to get people involved in a cause. What good is a cause when people join it only for monetary considerations? That would make them mercenaries, and not martyrs, as our supposed leaders would like us to believe. Most of us would dearly love to see themset an appropriate example by practising what they preach. After all, isn't that what good leaders do?
There will be more 'martyrs' added to the list by the time the constitution comes about. It now has a distinctly economic resonance, and just about anyone can be declared one if there is pressure from the right quarters.It would be very interesting to see just how appealing the martyrs list would be to people without all the financial support and incentive that comes with being included in the list. My guess is, not a lot.
We crossed the Rubicon a long time ago when successive governments decreed that every Ram, Shyam and Ghanshyam whose deaths became too hot to handle for the government were to be labelled as martyrs. Thus we have ended up shamelessly debasing the achievements of actual martyrs to pander to the whims of every section of the society.
Our martyrs and their causes are supposed to reflect us, and our ideals, as a nation. Consequently, we as citizens don't like what we see in that reflection and in those that are supposed to embody the struggles and spirit of our nation. At the end of the day the joke's really on all of us.
gunjan.u@gmail.com
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