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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a...

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a familiar script where an allegedly unassuming public figure embraces personal sacrifice and a reluctant government buckles under mounting moral pressure. But history does not repeat itself on command. Anna Hazare’s fast in 2011 succeeded not because fasting possesses mystical political powers, but because it rode a tidal wave of public anger against corruption. Millions identified with the cause. That equation is conspicuously absent today. The platform that ought to have belonged to students who suffered from the NEET paper leak, or to parents whose children bore its consequences, instead became crowded with the usual constellation of professional activists, ideological campaigners and political fellow travellers. The faces dominating the stage were not those most directly affected by the scandal. A movement demanding educational accountability gradually came to look like another gathering of Delhi’s permanently aggrieved activist class. Even Wangchuk appeared to sense the contradiction. During the protest he reportedly lamented that while he was observing an indefinite fast, many around him were happily eating meals, urging at least a token one-day fast in solidarity. Successful protest movements depend upon authenticity. Once the public begins suspecting that an individual is being deployed less as a leader than as a moral accessory for someone else’s ideological project, sympathy quickly evaporates. Nor does Wangchuk arrive without controversy. Questions have been raised over the cancellation of the FCRA licence of SECMOL, the educational organisation associated with him, and over allegations regarding subsequent foreign funding arrangements. Critics have also challenged aspects of the carefully cultivated public mythology surrounding his achievements, from the origins of the ice-stupa concept to the popular belief that he inspired the protagonist of 3 Idiots. These matters deserve scrutiny on their own merits rather than hagiography or character assassination. The greater failure here surely belongs to the protest’s organisers. The CJP has mistaken optics for momentum and symbolism for public sentiment. Instead of allowing the victims of the NEET scandal to speak for themselves, they attempted to manufacture another national conscience by placing a familiar face at the centre of the stage. Political legitimacy cannot be outsourced to celebrity. Nor can mass movements be assembled from social-media influencers and habitual protesters. Anna Hazare became powerful because the public chose him. Attempts to manufacture his successor merely underline how rare such moments really are.

Ungrateful Nation

Even by South Asia’s febrile standards, Bangladesh’s decision to pull the plug on the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a breathtaking exhibition of diplomatic petulance that betrays Dhaka’s deepening insecurity as the country lurches into turmoil.


The ostensible trigger for the ban the so-called ‘Mustafizur row.’ The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked for the release of Mustafizur Rahman from the Kolkata Knight Riders squad ahead of the 2026 IPL season owing to the crisis within the country and the anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiment within Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi state chose escalation by responding with a blanket ban on IPL broadcasts, wrapped in the language of wounded national pride. For a country whose citizens avidly consume Indian entertainment, sport and media, the move borders on the absurd.


That absurdity deepens when placed in context. Bangladesh is among the most India-dependent countries in South Asia. India is its largest trading partner in the region, an energy supplier and has, until recently, been its diplomatic shield in uncomfortable forums. Even its cricketing rise has been inseparable from Indian patronage including the IPL itself, which has turned Bangladeshi players into global brands. To theatrically boycott the league now tantamounts to self-harm.


More striking is the sheer ingratitude of this nation. Bangladesh’s very existence owes much to India’s intervention in 1971 in all forms - military, diplomatic and humanitarian. New Delhi bore enormous costs to midwife the birth of a nation that had been brutalised by the Pakistani military. For decades thereafter, India absorbed refugees, stabilised borders and repeatedly extended a hand of cooperation, often despite provocations. While gratitude in international politics rarely lasts forever, such open resentment from a beneficiary towards its benefactor speaks poorly about Bangladesh’s strategic maturity.


Worse, Dhaka appears to be flirting with a familiar and unhappy template of the Pakistan model of grievance-driven nationalism. By asking the International Cricket Council to move its T20 World Cup matches out of India, citing nebulous “security concerns,” Bangladesh has chosen to politicise sport in precisely the way Islamabad has done for years, often to its own detriment. The result could be a de facto cricketing wall between India and Bangladesh, choking bilateral series and isolating Bangladeshi cricket from its most lucrative neighbour.


All this hoity-toitiness might have been easier to stomach if Bangladesh’s moral posture were credible. It is not. As Dhaka lectures India on hurt sentiments, it continues to brutally persecute Hindus and other minorities within its own borders.


When governance falters, governments often reach for symbolic enemies. Cricket, the region’s shared religion, has now become Bangladesh’s chosen battlefield to rail against India. But symbolism cuts both ways. By blocking the IPL, Bangladesh is not humiliating India but depriving its own people of something they enjoy.


States that punch the air usually end up hitting themselves. Bangladesh would do well to remember which path it once hoped to follow and which neighbour it should avoid emulating.

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