Ponmala

During World War II there was an American military unit of the 101st Airborne Division consisting of demolition specialists. It was named the ‘Filthy Thirteen’. There was also an offer at that time by 44 prisoners serving life sentences to go on suicide missions against the Japanese. Perhaps, these inspired writer E M Nathanson to write the novel The Dirty Dozen. It was published in 1965 and became a bestseller. Two years later, a film based on the novel and bearing the same name was released by MGM. The film became a huge box office success.
Russian President Putin seems to have taken a leaf out of The Dirty Dozen and drafted some fifty thousand convicts for his war on Ukraine. Observers say they have been put in the frontline as cannon fodder. Graves of prisoner martyrs are mushrooming in the nook and corner of Russia. The war on Ukraine has suddenly transformed hardened criminals into patriots who died for the country. Those who survive the war for 6 months are given pardon with an exhortation that they shed their criminal ways.
The BBC has just brought out a two-episode documentary on the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The documentary finds the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, guilty of active connivance in the killing of over a thousand Muslims, rape of thousands of Muslim women and large scale destruction of property owned by Muslims. Criminal gangs affiliated to the Sang Parivar were used to perpetrate the crimes. The documentary has enraged Modi worshippers. The Godi Media is going at it hammer and tongs. Rattled by the documentary’s damning contents, the central government has blocked it on YouTube channels and Twitter – a clear proof that it gives a truthful account of what happened two decades ago in Gujarat under Modi’s watch.
Using criminals for achieving supposedly noble aims has become the order of the day. The Marxists of Kerala have for long engaged in violent clashes with rivals. One of their popular leaders, M.M. Mani, has openly boasted of killing political rivals. But, of late, they have taken to hiring contract killers to do the killing. The most glaring incident we have of it was the gruesome murder of Marxist dissident T P Chandrasekharan using a notorious murderous gang. Catholic priests accused of murdering Fr Thomas Pazhayampallil, former Rector of St Peters Seminary, Bangalore, are also believed to have used the service of contract killers. And just weeks ago, 19 Catholic hooligans were used by priestly ‘administrators’ to desecrate the Holy Mass and the altar in St Mary’s Basilica, Ernakulam, so that they could put the cathedral under lock and key on that pretext.
The desecrators of St Mary’s Basilica went on a rampage. One of them stomped on the altar, another toppled it, others manhandled the priests who were saying the Holy Mass and scattered the consecrated host and wine. The ‘administrators’ ensu-red that the desecrators enjoyed police protection. No police complaint has been made or registered against the hooligans. Neither has any ecclesiastical action been initiated against them. What’s more, no official statement has come from the just concluded Syro-Malabar synod specifically condemning the horrifying desecration of the body and blood of Christ. The bishops have generally observed condoning silence. This criminal silence is giving the stamp of approval to a trend setting scandal.
A catholic man paid a visit to his cardinal in 2011 and showed him photos of the burning of the effigy of his auxiliary bishop in the presence of a parish community. The man then requested the cardinal not to bless the grand new church built in the parish in question until those who committed the sacrilegious act apologised to the aggrieved bishop in the presence of the parish community to drive home, especially to the youth and children who were witnesses, that what happened was terribly wrong. But his appeal fell on deaf ears. The church was blessed three weeks later by the cardinal. Those who committed the sacrilegious act still occupy influential positions in that parish. The fabric of faith is now torn apart; mending it will not be an easy task. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the Church is hurtling back to the dark Middle Ages.
Nobility of character and righteousness have few admirers today; those who value them are even ridiculed as outmoded. It is in this context that one sees the warm reception Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra received as a glimmer of hope. This man, who has for years been ridiculed as an imbecile buffoon, is winning hearts just by crying out in the wilderness that rectitude, nobility of character, love and brotherhood should get reinstated in our national ethos at a time when hatred, division and violence are winning patriotic accolades. The 3,570 kilometre long walk that he just concluded is a silver lining in what is a gloomy moral horizon.