By Aditya Sinha
Last weekend, I went to Assam, regarded by TV anchors as a faraway corner, for a family event. For a brief while, I was on a different planet, blissfully unaware of politics. I forgot about the manipulation of voters’ rolls in Bihar, where a crucial State election is within sight, and was clueless about Elon Musk wanting to start a new political party in America (a trend that should not be pooh-poohed by traditional political machinery). It was a magical existence, without a care for political developments in these turbulent times that our species is hurtling through.
I admit: my own political awareness was, like an old single-engine aircraft, slow in starting. The first time I witnessed anything political was during the Bangladesh liberation war, when our north Bihar was blacked out every night, and we ran to my grandmother’s roof to watch aircraft pass over. I had no idea what was going on. Similarly, a few weeks after we arrived in New York (NY) in 1974, my father made me watch Richard Nixon’s televised resignation. Again, I had no idea why.
However, life in the US awakened my political consciousness. I saw, as soon as I got there, that Whites hated Blacks; and both hated Indians (and other immigrants, no doubt). Hatred of immigrants has always existed. Immigrants, on the other hand, are pusillanimous; they don’t want to be distracted from their main aim of plucking dollars from American money trees.
This story was originally published in frontline.thehindu.com. Read the full story here.
