Internet blockade in Howrah

After three days of Internet blockade by the state -

It feels like times have figuratively gone back. It's not too bad, since people anyway like to reminisce nostalgic past. I'm back at my pre-secondary and -higher-secondary days, listening to Radio (See Sinchan and Ashish, Radio is important). The added bonus now is the lack of television, because we disconnected our TV cable a few years back, thinking too progressively at that point of time. It's an interesting time to live.

Some people are comparing the current situation with the situation under the Fuhrer. This kind of simplification sometimes dilutes the significance of the concerning situation, by exaggerating it too far. But, even if we agree that the recent days in India has similarity to the Third Reich, there is a stark difference.

When Hitler was building his torturous empire, the economy was actually on the rise. It was recovering from the disaster of the World War I. It was a fully state-sponsored development for the private enterprises, with heavy spending on military, motorways and other public infrastructures. It also improved the unemployment by a good margin. All these apparent economic progress helped the Nazi agenda of ethnic cleansing by showing a false development and promising a bright future to the German people. Finally, the tragedy of mass killings was carried out.

The amazing achievement of the Modi government is that it is able to propagate its extremist, religious, conservative propaganda, in spite of an ongoing economic recession. People are jobless; common food prices are going up; economy is going downturn for quite a while. However, people are more engrossed into the non-economic issues. They are conveniently confronted with new social concerns which had nothing much to do with fundamental progress or economic growth.

As we discover similarities of our current times to the Nazi state, we should also recognize the difference. As the old man said, "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." We have possibly gone back, but with a new vigor of ignorance. We are living our own farce. The technological advancement helped it by both providing right information faster and also spreading misinformation quicker. But it is clear from the recent surge of protests all across India and some parts of the world that people ultimately sift through the garbage and side with progressive, humane cause. The state consequently abides by its mass.