The Change

Someone said it’s a ‘Bible’ that ‘every adult should read before they die.’ I have read it… much before death was in my mind! And reading it again, to celebrate Obama’s victory from a country, where talking against “Quota” can brand one a “Racist”. I’m reading “To kill a Mockingbird”.

That’s a charisma, that’s Obama who outsmarted a former First Lady first and then a Vietnam War prisoner… even more when he stole the once reliably red state – a state with 19% whites and less than 1% African American, also a state famously known for two major battles of American civil war – battles of Bull Run. Virginia voted Democratic assuring the Black man in the White House!

On his victory speech, he says ‘Tonight is the answer for those who still question the power of our democracy.’ He did it, despite the middle name that trembles many of us - Barack Hussein Obama.

We, the stalwart of democracy, trying to understand the 44th President-elect who just scripted a history - a history of real democracy. In our democracy, when Field Marshall Manekshaw died, not just Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air staffs but also the President, Prime Minister, Vice President and the Defence Minister have failed to make their physical presence. The man, who recently scripted history, also remains only American public figure of note to have condoled the death of the Field Marshal in early July this year.

When this man is all set to enter the power house at 1,600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington DC… his wife is concerned about their daughters’ next school, quite unlike our democracy where education is becoming more expensive for the masses and a cakewalk for leaders’ kith and kin. Like Nehrus-turned-Gandhis enjoyed India’s prestigious St. Stephen’s college without fulfilling even the minimum criteria to enter there.

Prime-Minister hopeful Mayawati won’t miss the opportunity to play her card – to draw an example between the African American Obama victory and need of a Dalit PM in India. I still remember a much heated face-off between a Dalit leader and an ‘upper caste’ well-known journalist in Ramjas College in 2003, where the journalist polietly asked, why do Dalit leaders ‘galvanise’ Dalits against Hinduism… where Hinduism has nothing to do with being ‘untouchables’.

The man who brought ‘change’ to America, the first black man to rule the White House didn’t play a race card. Not against the Evangelist McCain, not by carrying a Hanuman idol as his lucky mascot – but just by asking “if our children should live to see the next century, what change will they see?” Perhaps, the only thing Dalit Devi Mayawati or others would forget to play in their next race is ‘the change’ – of seeking for popular sympathy on pretext of being ‘less privilege’. ‘The change’ that I read in an OPED quoting the comedian DL Hughley “To all the kids here, you need not grow up only to be a rapper or a basketball player. After today, you can also grow to be the most powerful man in the world.”

While the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mum from Kansas with the middle name Hussein takes charge of world’s most powerful country; the 62-year-old democracy, India sees its countrymen killing each other… for being North Indians, Dravidians or Aryans!