Don't Let 'Pasting' Crowd Out the Future

Frankly, it's getting a bit tiring now. And if one is not getting bored by yet another revelation - confirmed or concocted - of a buried past lying under a ho-hum present, then one may be showing signs of addiction to this kind of communal - in the sense of community-bound - nostalgia. Before yet another court hearing of what is essentially a property dispute - this time involving the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi - petitioners have claimed the existence of an ancient object of worship, leading to the sealing of the entire structure.

Of course, this is not the kind of archaeological revelation being propounded by the petitioners that saw, say, Alexander Cunningham discovering the Ashokan pillar in Sanchi in 1851. Even if confirmed, the discovery of a shiv lingam in the Gyanvapi masjid structure would be swept away by triumphalism of a kind far removed from the wonderment of an archaeological find. In 2022 India, it increasingly seems that the past - confirmed or concocted - is becoming the go-to place, even a happy space, for those who find the present, never mind the future, wobbly and insecure.

From a larger psycho-social angle, such a trend shows a nation taking solace in various ideas of its past. Verification becomes secondary, even redundant, in this mass exercise of the will. To will something is, in this variant of Golden Ageism, is as good as is existing. The problem with this kind of thinking - apart from the potentially dangerous social and civic consequences of a majoritarian 'We were here first' and 'They destroyed our structures' trope - is that it essentially runs the risk of, at best, neglecting, at worst, ignoring the future. There is nothing, of course, that stops ambitious, successful societies from looking Janus-faced at both past and future. It is, in fact, a healthy sign when pride in history, or even mythology, is used to spur progress and development. But this balance falls by the wayside when 'pasting' becomes obsessive, turns into a national project from a party game. It is the future, then, that becomes relegated to the dustbin of history.