POPE FRANCIS’ LATEST ENCYCLICAL :
FRATELLI TUTTI (BROTHERS ALL)
SAMUEL’S TAKE ON ITS SPECIAL RELEVANCE TO INDIA
Fratelli Tutti is of special significance to India, since it is based on the Principle of universal brotherhood, वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्, (Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam : The Universe is one family), preached in one of the earliest Sanatan texts : Mahopanishad, (4 : 41), attached with two of the four Vedas, Atharva and Sam. The text of this Upanishad is based on the Advaitik Philosophy, (One formless God), summarised in the Vedanta, to which Adi Shankaracharya swore by. The Sanatan philosophy of God, comes closest to the Catholic Trinitarian Theology of God : Three Persons in One Being. Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar, having but one Atma. In today’s India, the phrase has become a big joke.
The Wisdom of the Pope’s exhortations in his latest Encyclical cannot be disputed. The urgent necessity of its application across the world is paramount. But how? That is the million-dollar question.
It is of great significance to us in India, where the Millenniums old social fabric has been torn asunder, in the last six and a half years, by the present Regime and its Hindutva Brigade. This Govt has a single point agenda : A Hindu Rashtra of their own design.
The Country is steadily slipping into the Black Hole of chaos and oblivion. We are at the threshold of being declared a pariah Nation.
India’s economy is speedily taking on Venezualan proportions and the Government, run by half-educated immoral imbeciles, has not the slightest clue to any remedial action; rule of law is now a myth; right to descent, no matter by whom, has been snatched away by freely street-roaming goons who first declare decenters as anti-National and then bash them up in broad daylight; to criticise the Govt calls for banishment to Pakistan; right to life, a fundamental one, is said to be no more enforceable even by the largely compromised Judiciary.
The Judiciary, one of the four pillars of the Constitution and its ultimate protector, chooses to take suo motu cognizance of an eleven years old boy’s death at his own home, just because his parents had taken part in an anti-CAA protest, but follows the wisdom of the proverbial three monkeys when it comes to the daily gruesome rapes and murders taking place all around them; a number of high-profile judicial pronouncements have been widely acclaimed as ludicrous; the AG, a constitutional authority and an advisor to the Govt as well as the judiciary, is made to plead before the latter on behalf of the Govt.
The girl child’s dignity is of no consequence and rape and murder of children, some as young as just a few months, is dime-a-dozen, without any conviction.
Ninety-nine percent of the wealth of the Country is in the hands of just 1% of the population and no stone is being left unturned for the concentration of even more wealth in the hands of these chosen few; with the judiciary looking on as mute and mook spectators, bit by bit, the Constitution of the Country is being rendered a useless junk, not worth the paper it is written on,
The reference to the visit of St Francis of Assisi, an impoverished priest, to Egypt at great personal cost, to meet the Sultan, is in stark contrast to what is happening in our Country today, where the local authorities are regularly visiting the hapless family of the recently brutally gang-raped and murdered teenager, but only to threaten them and subvert justice.
There is not just a war of words, backed up with all sorts of physical weapons, but a broad day-light en-mase murder of any form of love, which as the Papa says, is a divine gift, making it extinct like the Dodo.
Pope Francis has done his bit in emulating his namesake St by going to Abu Dhabi to meet the Grand Imam, but here in India, the head of the Government will not go to meet any Member of the Minorities unless she/he is his supporter.
SHATTERED DREAMS
Yes, our dreams have been shattered; the dreams of the freedom fighters, of makers of the Constitution of India, who spelt out in its Preamble about a country where there would be justice, equality, liberty and fraternity for the Indians in the decades thereafter only to be completely crushed into smithereens.
We are citizens of a country where a fairly large section of the majority community has been so drugged with the opium of Hindutva that they would rather starve to death because of the utter incompetence of the Government than come out of their stupor; drugged to the extent where that section, 80% of the Country, has been made to believe that a minority of 14 - 18% will endanger their so-called “Ram Rajya” with the former’s Shariya Laws; they would rather tolerate a government whose head is a universally acknowledged International lying Champion, than see a Ram Mandir not built.
Talking about peace and charity, the Pope is being rather charitable in using the term, “Certain regression”, at least as it concerns India. Here, largely, there is neither peace nor charity. Each one of us is engrossed and engulfed in quest of personal ambitions and wealth. Many of us do not give damn to the crushing of the lowest strata of our own brethren.
‘The interlinked world economy’, seen by Papa, is Utopian; it has, under the fervour of fake Nationalistic slogan shouting. Each country is hell-bent from the word go, to downsize its trading partner to have a favourable trade balance. Hunt for means to weigh down the trading partner with a high CAD, is the order of the day; you either give-in or go out into the cold. China and the USA are engaged in a tariff war; so are the USA and Europe.
Leading up to 2020, the euphoria of yore has turned into despair, with the GDP at -24%, the lowest in the free world. Exploitation is today’s art form. No Multi-National Corporation in the world is ready to sink its billions in a country unless there is a scope of ‘exploitation’.
Ours is a welfare state, but “Welfare” is not even the last word in the jargon of development, which, with soaring CAD, is Nil. Reminds me of the days when the CAD of our own family soared to an extent when we had to survive by selling our silver. The present Government is selling not just gold but even more precious “Nava-Ratnas” of the Country.
Amidst the present scenario, the Pope’s Encyclical sounds like a cry in the wilderness.
Para 13 of the Encyclical, the Pope is spot-on when he writes about the “Growing loss of sense of history” and “A kind of deconstructionism”; “Claims to creating everything from zero”;
How cruelly true is this one, “If someone tells young people to ignore their history, to reject the experiences of their elders, to look down on the past and to look forward to a future that he himself holds out, doesn’t it then become easy to draw them along so that they only do what he tells them? He needs the young to be shallow, uprooted and distrustful, so that they can trust only in his promises and act according to his plans. That is how various ideologies operate: they destroy (or deconstruct) all differences so that they can reign unopposed. To do so, however, they need young people who have no use for history, who spurn the spiritual and human riches inherited from past generations, and are ignorant of everything that came before them.”
To be truthful, the present regime has not just ‘deconstructed’ history, but has been busy rewriting it.
Most of what the Pope has written above, sounds uncannily and disconcertingly close to home. I am reasonably sure that Papa had India in mind.
LACKING A PLAN FOR EVERYONE
In a country where sloganeering, totally devoid of content, starting at the very top, rules the roost, empty rhetoric scores big. Our own Marc Antony has outclassed Shakespeare’s character of “Julius Caesar” by miles. He has convinced his bhagats that responsibility for all the ills of the present, lie on all the past Congress Govts. If he had not done his masterclass salvaging, the situation would have been much worse.
Some of the multi-hued balloons of slogans doing furious rounds and echoing even in the remotest corners of the Country were, “Har har Modi, ghar, ghar Modi”, “Abki baar, Modi Sarkar”, “Agli baar, Modi Sarkar”, “Sab kaa saath, sab ka vikas, sab ka viswas”, “har account men pandrah laakh”. Like the piped piper, he has led the entire Country over the precipice.
A THROWAWAY WORLD
Once again, Pope Francis has done some plain speaking by highlighting the “use and throw” policy in the modern world. Use to the hilt till it is productive and throw away, the moment it stops being so; equally applicable to the animate world as to the inanimate one.
Wastefulness by the rich is a crime of Himalayan proportions. As we were growing up, our Mothers would drum into us the importance of not leaving even a morsel on our plates for, saying, “There are millions who starve to death for the lack of even a morsel”. We were taught to leave at least 5% empty space in our stomach, each time we ate a meal. That 5% would go to the deprived hungry, doing good not only to our physical health but to our spiritual health too. In the modern consumption-driven world, such teachings sound hollow.
Not surprisingly we show more love and care towards our old and infirm pets, than for our own old parents, who had held our hands and helped us to stand on our own feet. I doubt if the clarion call of the Pope will have any effect on such young practising criminals, under 45 years of age, comprising 80% Indians. They will age at almost the same time and will need support and not banishment. Not that the young of today, do not know this plain fact, but are afflicted with the typical, “Will see” syndrome, as if they are willing themselves to remain forever young and one day depart suddenly, at the drop of a hat. Papa’s exhortations matter little to them; even among most of the young Catholic Christian faithful.
SUSTAINABLE Vs UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
This is another area of great and immediate concern flagged by the head of the Holy See. Every development of any kind has to be sustainable on a number of platforms, like stopping non-over-exploitation in the mining of raw material, production capacity of components, the destruction of Nature with all its components, be it green belts and its dependent living beings, (Including humans), ecological balance, water resources and so on. In India, there is a callous exploitation of each one of the aforementioned resources, with the active aid of complicit authorities. As the President of a Property Development Company, I had myself been guilty of such acts in the past.
HUMAN RIGHTS
This is an anathema to the present ruling lot and not surprisingly after six years of constant harassment, the WHRO unit of India has packed its bag and left. The Government remains unconcerned.
CONFLICT AND FEAR
Every conceivable ground of conflict are present in India; between the haves and have nots, the oppressors and the oppressed, the power centres and the marginalised, the rulers and their subjects, (both financial and non-financial), and so on. The present Government has just enacted a law, depriving the labour of their right to protest and strike, even with notice, and has given the companies to hire and fire at will. This is a dangerous seed of deep discord, which may erupt into a violent strife in the near future.
SHARED ROAD MAP
The Papa Padre has made a gross understatement in, “What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion.” Not only that there is no shared road map, not even the feeblest attempt towards such a goal, there are active conflict zones fuelled by National/personal ambitions, be it the Chinese, the Americans, the Russians, the Turks in the latest conflict, between Azerbaijan and Armenia or we the Indians under the present Government, pompously aspiring to be a "Vishwa Guru",
THE PANDEMIC EFFECT
During the last big pandemic, the H1N1 influenza spread its wing across the globe in 1918. It was 14 times more infectious than the present one, affecting one-third of the then Global Population, killing 50 million, out of which nearly 1.4% were in the USA.
Though, this time around, the total global deaths, to date, are just above 1 million, the share of USA is about 20% and about the same in the numbers of affected cases. These are based on official figures bandied around by the authorities in India, among some other countries. The actual figures, in so far as India is concerned, determined by me, (A graduate in Statistics), through statistical calculations and duly displayed on my Facebook page from time to time, are 10 times higher. With those figures, we have been leading the Globe for some time now. Even with the doctored official figures, we will be the Numero Uno in less than 20 days from now.
As we groaned under the load of the pandemic, almost everyone optimistically said, (Including our own Papa), that this pandemic, by the time it ends, will have completely and permanently changed the interpersonal and social behavioural pattern of people for a more sharing, caring and empathetic one. From what we see around us, (Latest examples are the gruesome murders of two teenaged girls after gangraping them, first at Hathrus and then at Balarampur, U.P., in a span of two days, the follow-up actions of the State administration and the reactions of scores of BJP leaders from many parts of the Country), it does not seem that there has been an iota of change in the interpersonal attitude between people within a society and that between different societies. There is also a marked absence of one Nationhood. While young females are being brutally gang-raped on a daily basis, immoral imbeciles play politics, blaming the innocent young village girls for their own rape.
DIGNITY OF MIGRANTS ENTERING THROUGH POROUS BORDERS
I am afraid Papa Francis’ urgings may not stand the test of times. They are unrelated to ground realities, not just in the Indian perspective, but also in his own backyard, Europe.
The World history of many millenniums, is replete with stories of mass influx of immigrants. Arians came in successive hoards into the Indian subcontinent from the steppes, over five centuries, completely obliterating the pre-existing advanced peaceful IVC of Harrappa/ Mohenjedaro, whose Saraswati/Harappan script has yet to be deciphered even after nearly 200 years of its discovery.
The Arians infiltrated further into the Indian hinterland and today rule India by their sheer numbers. Since coming to power, a dogmatic Communal Hindutva party has been busy rewriting history and claiming to be the originals of the Subcontinent!
Exactly the same happened to the Americas, due to continuous influx of gun trotting immigrants from Europe, completely obliterating the advanced cultures of the Incas. Similar transformation, often through violent activities, is taking place in the European heartland due to massive waves of Muslim migration. Country after Country, which compassionately let-in Muslim refugees from the Middle East, are now having to suffer extreme violence from Muslim extremists generated from the same refugee population that they had let-in out of compassion. While the rest of the World sees their own relationship with God through the prism of their respective religions, the Muslims see it as “Umma”, a Nation, disruptively spread over the World in pockets. They want to see themselves in a unified “Ummma”, spread across the Globe.
No one is against allowing a suffering people to settle peacefully in a peaceful land, but the problem with Muslim immigrants is that even though they arrive of their own volition at the midst of a foreign culture, they make no effort to imbibe their way of life. There is no enculturation for them. The moment they reach a substantial number, say, 20 – 30% of the total population, through sustained multiple births, a vocal and violent minority, with the tacit unspoken support of most of the silent majority, starts demanding that their own way of life, like the Sharia courts, be made official, thus becoming a sore thumb and opening up the gates to permanent conflict. None of the silent Muslim majority will stick a neck out to start any movement against the violence being perpetrated by the goons, as they are too scared to lose their own life.
Much higher growth rates among the Muslims is a factor that frightens the other citizens of the Country. Lebanon is a glaring example, where a once majority Christian Country, on the way to becoming a Majority Muslim Country, suffered a ten years-long civil war, before uneasy peace could prevail between the Druz and the Muslims. Even now, with a Muslim PM, a figurehead Christian President, the Iran supported Hezbollah have a free run of the land, attacking Israel. Lebanon has to bear the brunt of Israel’s wrath.
In post-partition India, the percentage of Muslims was around 8%. As per the 2011 Census, the percentage had risen to 14+%, a rise of 75%. At the same growth rate, the population had doubled by 2016; i.e., in 69 years of post-partition communal division of India.
Though a comparison of the figures of successive Census’ shows that the growth rate of Muslim population has been steadily decreasing, the comparative increase in their population, the highest among all, rings alarm bells for the Majority Community, especially since their population has actually slightly decreased.
Though the next Census is still a year away, rough estimates place the present percentage of Muslim population to be around 18+%. By the next Census, it is reasonable to assume that the percentage would stand at around 19. This is approximately 138% increase on the 1947 post-independence figure.
Whatever the Quran may say about it, the word “Jihad” sets the back up of most non-Muslims, due to its gross misuse by the Muslim extremists, all over the World. The loss of population due to internecine conflicts with Muslim terrorists could probably be made up over years, but who can bring back the permanently destroyed cultural heritage, destroyed by these goons. Can we forget the two, millenniums old Bamiyan Buddha Statues, destroyed by the Taliban with Artillery guns! Who can remake the invaluable archaeological/ architectural artefacts in Syria-Iraq, wantonly destroyed by the ISIS?
Recounting a summary of the happenings around the world over the last 70 years, it is not difficult for the anti-Muslims to convince the majority community that their culture, which has survived the vicissitudes of almost 2 Millenniums, is now in grave danger of being obliterated by the non-indigenous Umma. Many in the Defence Forces, both serving and retired, steeped in secularism by training and oath, have also not only started believing it, but are also privately/publicly airing their fears. Such communalisation of the Indian Defence Forces would be the beginning of the end of our Nationhood.
The Talibanis, the ISISs and their ilk, have effectively silenced even the Muslim intelligentsia into a scared silence. One of my Army course mates, who is thoroughly secular, a prolific writer and the author of many a book, despite my periodic urgings, has not written a single one in outright condemnation of the malaise in their Umma, which has become a festering wound in the World Society in general,
The openly divisive communal agenda practised by the present regime over the last six and half years, along with the presstitute media has caused havoc; hairline cracks have become unbridgeable wide gaps.
Considering the facts on the ground, whatever the Papa has exhorted in this wonderful encyclical, will not only be considered impracticable but undesirable by the people of many of the Nations suffering the backlash of their earlier generosity in letting the Muslims in. The evil forces of Muslim Umma are far more pervasive than any that the Catholic Church can muster at its best, to reform the unreformable.
Notwithstanding the above, we, who care for humanity and believe in the wonderful teachings of Papa Francis, must try our best to neutralise the evil with Love, Love and more Love, in a concerted manner. It is better to go down fighting the Evil than to passively surrender to its designs
