The Numbers Game

It is usual, even normal, to start “Operation Clean-up” at the top. History and historical literature and folk-lore are full of examples of this process—known and recognized down the ages as the “purge”. It is, after all, only a house-cleaning exercise, but add the ingredient of politics into the equation and you come up with the notion of eradication, or elimination, or expulsion, in the garb of catharsis, which can also have links to purification, or purgation, or persecution. That’s when clean-up time—and times—become ominous: think of the liberation (?) of the West through the sequestering of the native Indians; think of the Holocaust and Hitler’s rabid genetic experimentation; think of discrimination and the continuance of similar evil systems that are still in place, and the larger picture unfolds.

But this is India! Incredible India!! Over here, we don’t start at the top: we do it the other way round. Pick out a few insignificant human beings, stage-manage a comprehensive Census to back you up and then, in one fell stroke, you consign one, or 296 –OF YOUR OWN—to oblivion, in the twinkling of an eye. You take away their rights, you take away their representation, you take away their “raison d-etre” by stating that all the “real” Anglo-Indians have already left the country, even as you say that there are still 296 souls accounted for in your records. And you continue to blather away because no one can stop you, not even your own conscience. If there is truth in the saying that when you repeat a lie a thousand times it becomes the gospel, then all I can say is that such poppycock can “happen only in India”.

I’m guessing that the number 296 is actually in the Census of 2011. That was when the Congress Party was in power. To take, therefore, in the year 2019, an outdated Census Report prepared by a previous government, to be accurate after the lapse of 8 long years, is chicanery of the lowest order. Even an ostrich is not so dense, but the government, (re-elected again in 2024) went ahead in Alice-in-Wonderland [“Off with their heads”] haste and erased those 296 souls from the Statute Books in the Parliament session of 2020. Representations were made by the few and shawls were spread over the shoulders of some worthies in New Delhi, but the eerie silence of Vox Populi demonstrated that India had lost Her soul. In other words, no one seemed to have the guts to call the bluff, not many seemed to have the will to fight the injustice, and almost everyone consciously—not conscientiously, by the way—looked the other way, lost in that hollow, jingoistic slogan “Sabke saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas”. Incredible!!!

On other fronts the self-same government is lavish in its endowments. Take the “cheetah”, for example. Since the population of this animal had dwindled almost to the point of extinction in this great land of India, it was thought expedient to import a few from a friendly African nation. The 12 felines, along with a select band of VVIPs, made the front pages of all the newspapers and the beasts were then dispersed to one of our many national animal sanctuaries. Word was that some of these cats died—reasons not entirely known—and replacements were procured. And yet poachers always seem to have a field day, in Kaziranga or some other similar spot.

Now look at the endangered species known as Anglo-Indian in his own habitat. Systematically shunted out of his own terrain, he tried to make a Homeland in his own country. Experiments took root, bore fruit and then, with very little to-do, went to boot. Think of McCluskiegunj, think of Whitefield, think of Abbotabad, think of Veteran Lines. After thinking long and deep, begin your lamentations. If the Motherland can disband you, if they can de-recognize you, if they can disown you, the last recourse is—alas—to depend on the kindness of strangers. Do we really love our neighbours? Or is that, too, an alien concept? Your guess is as good as mine, dear Reader.

I have no photos to offer you, this time. Perhaps it’s because the times are bleak and I am feeling it, too. We live in a cold, callous, cruel world. All we can do now, all we can ever do, is to hold fast. No one cares and in spite of all that we say, nothing really matters.

Don’t cry for me, Bharat India; the truth is I never left you.