Valluvar , Vallalar and our national Poet Bharathiyar were in a sense terrorist of noblest variety: Let's imbibe their spirit of Righteous Anger

In an age and environment  where information  is flooding  like torrential  rain it's  debatable  to what extent  we are  gathering  knowledge  and making  use of it for personal  gain or rendering  public good.

 Understanding is deeper than knowledge.At seventy I sincerely feel that education has not given me either understanding of myself or the knowledge of my subject.

Foolishly I had thought that age has mellowed me down and the angry man in me has vanished into thin air and that and I keep my eyes wide open and watch what  I am doing.

The absurdity and uncertainty of life including its unpredictability always remind me that unless there's grace from above and distilled essence of wisdom flowering from within one could be  a slave to anger ,that is the most dangerous virus which will paralyse your limbs and stupify the mind putting pressure on the heart and the entire constitution of the body.

Here more than the receiver , the giver ie the author and architect of anger suffers more.This is an interesting role reversal ...

This does not imply that ànger doesn't have any role to play.

Indeed poet Bharathi had always asked us to cultivate righteous and reasoned anger.That is what I have internalized right from my appointment as Assistant professor in 1970.Two decades later this trait gave me the title Academic Terrorist..

Benevolent Terrorism like benevolent dictatorship is very much the need of the hour all over the globe  as rightists in power have been  unleashing  violence  and suffering  on the disadvantaged  by fully exploiting  the pathetic  pandemic  situation. 

Nearer home intellectuals with dissenting voices  have been  hunted and the much worrisome  factor  is that both the media and the judiciary  have not bothered to collar the wrong  doers.

These  law abiding  citizens  are frustratingly  irritated  with the fast deteriorating economic  and social  situation  and its attendant consequences  for the livelihood  issues of the most dispossessed and disadvantaged.

 The intellectuals  who care for the sanity of the system operate with pen and tongue and not gun and hatred.Here blood does not spill but ideas clash and spark fire and that destroys all the evils and ills and help create a new society.

Viewed from this perspective valluvar, vallalar , Vivekananda and Bharathi are  great humanists  and benevolent terrorists of finest variety who couldn't tolerate injustice and discrimination of all kinds.

At a time when non issues  become  main issues and real economic  issues get relegated  to the background  we need the reasoned  and righteous  anger of Poet Bharathi. 

If the educated  and the elite and the vast middle  class get fooled and seduced by the call of the consolidation  of Hindu unity and Hindutva  victory  then  a time will come  when they will be annihilated  by the Tsunami  of Nature.. 

 We the people  of India  need to draw limits  to the mischief  indulged in by the rulers  in the name of language  politics  and  pseudo  religious  sentiment. The moral universe of these power  mongering  unprincipled  politicians  has shrunk  and  become almost  nonexistent. 

This is the time to internalize  the righteous  anger of Poet Bharathi  and  Valluvar  to put the economy  back on the rails.