Devangshu Datta: A generation that divides

WORM'S EYE VIEW

Through 1946, the slogans resounded through the streets of Bengal, "Amader Atom Bomb/Qaid E Azam/" "" our atom bomb is the Qaid-E-Azam. It takes an ear educated in the cadences of spoken Bengali to realise that it is possible to rhyme two words drawn from two unrelated languages in a manner that makes sense only in a third. It was a feat of literary creativity that went unappreciated by most because the slogans were always followed by rioting and violence.

1946 was the year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the year before the event referred to variously as Partition/Independence occurred. Over 80 per cent of the world's current inhabitants were born after these two events. But both events were so poisonously radioactive that they still cast a pall over the world. There are very few Indians or Pakistanis of any age, who are neutral on either subject.

Lal Krishna Advani belongs to that small minority of people who were very much around at the time and are still amidst the ranks of the living. As a young man, he went through the trauma of being driven from his home by the followers of the Qaid-E-Azam. He was part of the generation that shaped the modern sub-continent.

Judging by the positions he espoused through his political career, he was very pro-nuclear and anti-partition. One presumes that he remains pro-nuclear but one wonders what his views on Pakistan are, in the evening of his life and perhaps, of his political career. At any rate, his views on Jinnah appear to have changed from the Hindutva line that he and his coterie nurtured through so many decades.

Do Advani's views on Jinnah matter? After all, Pakistan is a fait accompli; the Qaid-E-Azam passed on more than 50 years ago. Advani himself is pushing 80.

Their legacy is nothing to be proud of. One way or another, that generation mismanaged the sub-continent so badly that they left three nations mired in poverty, bitterness and communal hatred. The little that has happened in terms of development has occurred very recently and despite that generation's incompetence.

That generation's inability to rise above reflexive hatred to trust its own cross-border members has made it impossible for India and Pakistan to contemplate lasting peace and cut military budgets to allocate scarce resources to education and the building of social infrastructure. That generation hobbled India, Pakistan and the relatively new Bangladesh.

We are all creatures of our times, shaped by the events that occurred as we grew up. That generation could not, as a generation, learn to live and let live. It was too much to ask of an entire generation.

Out of hundreds of millions of individuals, a rare few did perhaps learn to forgive, if not forget. But for an entire generation to undergo such a change in attitude was impossible. Most of them have unfortunately passed their inimical attitudes to their descendants.

But there is a difference in the intensity of inherited hatred and perhaps, there is also a difference in the sheer competence and pragmatism of the current generation of young adults versus the Advani generation.

It's an absurdity of the political system that there is no mandatory retirement age. Be it government officers or executives in private employment, people are pensioned off between ages 58 and 65. This means that, even with generous extensions of service, men and women of obvious competence are sent off figurative sanyas if they were born before 1945. It is a great, great, pity that this rule is not automatically applied to politics.

The world, and not just India or Pakistan, would be a far better place if there was a cut-off date for standing for political office just as there is a cut-off age for every other form of paid employment. Since there isn't, we are condemned to eternally debate the Qaid-E-Azam's secularism or lack of it.