Great novels have mapped out the interplay between historical forces and the lives of individuals, shown how political sins of commission and omission come down the lanes of time to devastate the lives of ordinary citizens. In these compressed times it may be possible to tell one such story in the space of a few hundred words.
Millennia-old tradition
There was once a Prime Minister in the time known as the 1980s. This man, let’s call him Pappu da Pappa (PdP), like the mafia have capo dei capi (boss of bosses, bhai of bhais). Now, PdP was ill-equipped to rule the country (nowhere near as ill-equipped as one or two who followed him, but still pretty bad) and he made several terrible mistakes during his tenure. The biggest one was to open the locked doors of a disputed religious site. Another biggie was to side with reactionary leaders of a religious minority over the matter of justice for a divorced woman.
Both these were done to protect different vote banks. A less noticed mistake was made in order to keep America happy: in line with the Reagan administration’s definition of marijuana as a ‘hard drug’, in 1985 PdP’s government criminalised the use of ganja and charas, while protecting the manufacture and consumption of bhang. What PdP should have done is shown some atmanirbharta and nirbhay-ta , told the Reagan gang to go take a hike, and protected our millennia-old tradition of ganja consumption.
Instead, cannabis became illegal and the following happened: 1. the use of ganja continued but it became much more expensive 2. this led to the introduction of far more dangerous drugs which had hitherto not seen much traction in the country, resulting in widespread addiction to brown sugar and the like 3. just as the poor suffer the most under alcohol prohibition, turning to toxic brews, here too the urban poor were the worst affected by the new drugs.
However, the most dangerous drug released under PdP’s watch was majoritarian religious fundamentalism. Coupled with the unbridled capitalism let loose by PdP’s successors, this brought the republic into the maws of destruction within 25 years, creating a critical shock for its democratic immune system and putting humanity, civility and decency into the ICU under a deep coma.
Cut to the present. Just as the worsening environmental crises mean that nature goes into deep distress, the growing social crisis in the country adds to mental health issues, especially among younger people. One such young man was a talented actor working in the film industry in a city by the sea. One day he was tragically found dead by suicide. Instead of starting a much-needed discussion on mental health, the young man’s death became a trigger for multiple poisons to start seeping out of the pores of our seriously ill society.
Narcotic mixture
Criminally cynical news anchors and their media channels saw the suicide as a TRP bonanza. Politicians now occupying the top posts in this fictitious country saw a great way to distract from their incompetence in dealing with the disasters the country was facing. They decided that this death could be leveraged to win State elections in another part of the country and simultaneously make the party running the government in the city by the sea look bad. And so, the circus began. First the rumour was solidified on air — this was not suicide but murder! Or, at least, it was abetment to suicide, which is tantamount to murder! Motive? Why, embezzlement and money-laundering, of course!
One by one, the country’s major investigative agencies, the ones that are supposed to be tackling the big crimes, descended upon the dead man’s apartment and began to put his grieving partner through the wringer. Previous governments had misused these agencies, but the people now in charge took this to a whole new level — imagine the equivalent of the American FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration all proving themselves be nothing more than vengeful private militias of the top bosses in the country’s capital. Imagine these private militias showing themselves to be working in a close dance with captive TV channels, which are the government’s propaganda arms.
In sequence, when the top criminal investigative agency found no trace of foul play, the story was changed on the TV channels and the economic crimes wing was brought in. When they found no trace of financial wrongdoing, the channels changed tune and the national drug detectives came in. Finally, they claimed to have found around 50 grams of cannabis — remember, in this fictitious country cannabis is regarded as Shiva’s prasad as much as bhang is — and for possessing these 50 grams they arrested the dead man’s partner, her brother and various others. As the farce continues, we the consumers of this story, continue to watch agog, lapping up every byte of the narcotic mixture of lies that is fed to us.
Ruchir Joshi is a filmmaker and columnist.
