A group of scientists abroad claim to have implanted false memory in mice. This is indeed not news. We in India have done it too often and at a vastly superior scale with humans. Successive governments have easily made people forget their limitations and made people think of the country or the state as one that has never faced problems. Look at the disturbances in Parliament. Every party conveniently forgets that it didn’t allow parliament to function when it was in opposition and laments the working hours lost when they are in power. That they also raised petrol and food grain prices is also forgotten.
We also have aspirants from various parties for the post of the prime minister. All of them administer a dose of some drug through their speeches to their audience who promptly forget the acts of commission and omission by the candidate and his/her party. Great, isn’t it? And we are printing the claim of the scientists abroad as if it is news. Well, our journalists have to just look around themselves and they will find that we have achieved all this here and long ago.
Remember the headlines of newspapers just months ago. Who remembers now? Cases were registered and courts started hearing them. But now they are out of sight and mind. By the time the cases trudge their way to the Supreme Court, Voyager I may have been to the stars and a reply might have been received by us from our distant neighbours. This is how our memory is erased and replaced with a false one. Simple indigenous method. But who values home-grown talent? That’s how we’ll tackle the Ram Mandir/Babri Masjid case, telecom scam, spot-fixing, et al.
As a matter of fact by the time these matters are finally disposed of we might be quarrelling who made a structure on Saturn first and who demolished whose structure. The new case will take away attention from earlier ones and that is the way we do things even now. Forgetting, and not settling things, is our way. Now and then someone tries to remind us of the past but we remember to forget until someone reminds us to forget again.
Some are complaining that our food habits and adulteration etc. are causing the spread of Alzheimer’s in India. That could be partly true but most of our cases are different from the West. We remember and forget when and what we want. We remember a player’s religion, caste and state when he plays badly. We forget it when he does well. Then he becomes something that most of us can only vaguely identify as Indian.
The news about artificial memory in mice by is not news at all for Indians. Yet we waste precious newsprint to praise achievements by others. Creating false memories is a national pastime. We are ignoring it like we ignore games like kho kho and kabaddi because they are Indian. When will we display national pride in our talent that is so wilfully ignored? After the invention of zero, memory erasing and creation is the greatest thing done by Indians for which the country as a whole could be awarded a Nobel Prize. Jai Hind!