GBL

Not very long back, perhaps even today, when foreign reporters visited North Korea, they were taken through a guided tour of the "achievements" of, no not the country, but the GBL. The Great and Beloved Leader, as Kim II-Sung perhaps christened himself, was the war hero, the helper of the peasants, the builder of dams, the leader of armies, the hope of the working class, the eternal leader. Songs were sung about him. Symposiums were held celebrating his very many political and intellectual achievements. Anybody who had slightest of doubts about GBL's greatness was deemed a traitor. In the meanwhile, the country lived on the edge of fear and insecurity, held massive military parades and kept one of the largest standing armies. No doubt all of it helped conceal the massive under-development, corruption and sheer ruthlessness of GBL's regime. Even self proclaimed leftists felt his fat neck to be a constant provocation in need of a bullet through it.  But why all this song and dance about a man dead and gone in a land far and away? Because we have our own GBL in the making, variously called NaMo and Feku, who is being propped up by a relentless marketing machinery to be the saviour that India has been waiting for the last millennium. And we would have been terrified by the prospect of his homecoming, if we did not know that India is bigger and older and more diverse and secure than North Korea or Gujarat. We should perhaps only be amused, but then how can you be before an Indian elections?