Saifai: an alternate angle

The recent Bollywood bash organized at Saifai by the Akhilesh Yadav government has drawn quite a flak from all quarters of the civil society and the media. People have questioned the brazen shamelessness with which the state administration scorched exchequer’s money to have some fun at a time when the Muzaffarnagar riot victims – still homeless and struggling to make a living in relief camps – were up against the terrible winter waves. Bollywood biggies like Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit have come under aggressive scrutiny for not having shown the courage to pull out of this festival citing humanitarian concerns. Quite fittingly, Nero played the fiddle while Rome burnt! I want to, however, look at it from a different angle.

Let’s try to understand who the primary stakeholder in this festival this year was. It was the people. I’m told thousands of people flocked together to catch a glimpse of the performers from the tinsel town. Who are those people? Aren’t those the aam aadmi, who’ve lost their near and dear ones in the brutal Muzaffarnagar riots? Have they not been shattered looking at a Godhra happening in their backyard? Has their conscience not been challenged by the continued apathy of the Samajwadi Party government to the survivors? Did they not know that a huge number of children died in those relief camps where they were supposed to have been protected by the authorities? Did the Europe vacation by ministers and legislative assembly members funded by the common men and women not cause their eyebrows to frown? Did all the people who attended the carnival not have the moral obligation to show solidarity to their brothers and sisters who were languishing out there with rehabilitation eluding them even after so many days of the massacre? In other words, am I to believe that the Saifai festival was a celebration of the shameful demise of compassion for fellow humans?

I’m glad we’re targeting the state government for not calling off the event, and we’re up in arms against Bollywood. But who’ll question the collective failure of thousands of people who have shamed themselves by turning up? Could they not have boycotted the carnival? If they had, who would the performers entertain in the first place? Akhilesh Yadav could go ahead with this extravagant affair despite criticism by everyone because people of his state allowed him to.

It has become cool of late to bash up any form of organized institution in the country. While it’s a welcome change in the society to demand an increased level of transparency and sense in administration, we also need to look into the mirror. Our madness to challenge the status quo shouldn’t come at the cost of introspection. We have no moral right whatsoever to ask the authorities for explanation until we clean up our own act. 

I appeal to the people of Uttar Pradesh to unite against all wrongdoings by their state government and to realize that SP is a close cousin of BSP. They’re exactly like the Congress and the BJP on the national scale. Two different names, but the same ideology.