Anupam Kher made the most direct attack to reject the leadership of Rahul Gandhi at the Telegraph event. His speech missed the whole idea of democracy. He was heralding Modi for his non stop without holiday work for last two years. But he missed a subtle point "Democracy is not about individuals rather Democracy is about groups". It is about group thinking. His andh-bhakti led to his criticism of Dr. Manmohan Singh and Kanhaiya Kumar. Probably he was not following the international politics of Singh primeministership. Otherwise he would refrained from making such derogatory comments. Yes Modi has taken it to another level by connecting with Indian diaspora. But possibly for the reason that they could be his future vote bank and are part of his social media marketing. It was a speech full of theatre, clamour and irrationality. Somewhere I saw traces of childishness. Suhel Seth fist thumping and personal attacks on honourable justice Ganguly were symptoms of the same.
Immediately followed the speech of Barkha Dutt. She pointed towards the worsening role of Media and lost art of conversation for degrading standards of Debate. She quoted beautifully scholar Karl Popper's view on intolerance. Probably his speech was a lesson to Kher on how to converse and how to debate, if at all he paid attention to it.
One disappointing thing in contemporary society is people identify more with noise, gets swayed
by rhetoric, and are influenced by passionate argument rather than absorbing rationale dialectics. Everywhere on media, I see people sharing Kher's speech and his bashing of Gandhi, judge Ganguly, and aunty-national Kanhaiya Kumar. But no body is talking about Barkha Dutt's lucid argument which questioned the role of their own fraternity, the media houses.
The very nature of debates, their contents and manner of presentation makes one understand "what is intolerance debate all about?".
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