Dangling Pointers - Ideologies of so called Modern Indians

I am a Computer Science & Engineering Graduate and the title of this post should be comprehensible for people who come from the same academic background and for those who don’t - below is the minimal definition from Wikipedia.

Dangling Pointers: Dangling pointers in computer programming are pointers that do not point to a valid object of the appropriate type. These are special cases of memory safety violations.

The presumption that an individual can be devoid of an ideology by being an active participant in social and political issues is not agreeable to me, for me it’s more of an hypocrisy and style statement and less to do with the social and political neutrality which an individual tries to project himself to keep immune from any disturbances. In this internet age, where one has the extreme freedom to express his views with anonymity and where one has the power to question and expose the lies of others, it’s imperative that the individual has an ideology. But, these-days I find a peculiar set of people who claim that they do not belong or associate themselves to any particular ideology but their views are based on greater good of the society and some clichéd stuff.

Sagaika Ghose, author of the book ‘Gin Drinkers’ states that her political ideology is ‘Liberal Democracy’ “Theoretically”. Barkha Dutt editor of NDTV enlightens us of what is bad by tweeting “Many of those tweeting in the name of the 'Right' online are the worst Ambassadors for their ideology. Mostly spewing poisonous garbage.”, We have B.Raman, who equates the restless right wing online people as ‘Nazi storm troopers’, the one and only Ramachandra Guha who is an expert in history, cricket, politics etc… and I suspect that his computer password is the pet name of the ‘The Greatest Indian after Gandhi’, the editor in chief of ‘The Hindu’ who has the unique power to read hundreds and thousands of pages of court judgments with in a matter of hours and write an editorial on it. All the mentioned esteemed people can easily be associated with one or the other ideology. The new group (I must admit that I found these creed recently, they may have come into existence even before my discovery) which deny any association to any particular ideology but project themselves as active citizens who have genuine concern towards society and politics amaze me and I call them as ‘Dangling Pointers’ and thus the title of the post. May be its premature for me to classify them, but taking of risk of going wrong, I would give a general classification based on my observations.

Orphaned Liberals:
This title may seem a bit perplexing, but its seemed apt to me as the people of this category doesn’t fall into any category of Liberals. The Classical Liberalism is a tough course, Centre-Left doesn’t fit in most of the contexts, and the JNU brand of Left Liberals doesn’t seem to appease them and vice-versa. These are usually better educated lot than the rest. They resist to bracket themselves in any form of Liberalism or associate with any form of Liberterians. Their jiffy thoughts based on surrogated intellectualism expose their stand and veiw point in many of the social and political problems. Most of the recent Stand-up artits, traditional artits, film-makers, page3 columnists etc.. make into this category.

• Borrow some liberal ideas, apply them to specific causes. 
• Play safe, by saying ‘Greater Good’ whenever confronted with diffuclut queries. 
• Distance yourself with any form of ideology and play the victim when needed. 
• When you have no idea of whats happening, blame the majority. 
• Good memory is needed to spell some good rhetoric phrases of equality and liberty. 
• Sympathy is the tool to turn your argument towards you by sidelining the facts. 
• Promote pictures of how may people die in some country of Africa, request people to cry for them and not for Steve Jobs. 
• The word ‘Crony Capitalism’ is the Brahmastra, comes very handy when you are cornered with statistics and facts.

Confused Right:
These are the upper class idiots who are super lazy and accept perceptions of others without any pondering or discussion. These are special species which make no effort to know the truth or question the mediocrity of others views. The most sad part is that they are equipped with knowledge but fail to recognize the essence of it and finally bury themselves with dim-witted conclusions which are not based on the knowledge but are based on the adjustment factor. They have a moderate knowledge about politics, social issues, economics etc… but suddenly they seem to resort to the clumsy dialectics. 

• The methodology adopted to reach a particular conclusion for a problem or a scenario is based on the assumed or guessed result but not by scrutinizing the process or validation of the practice. For example, the ‘Confused Right’ energetically rejects that what Ayn Rand promotes in ‘The Fountainhead’ cannot be accepted because the likelihood of a Howard Roark in a real world is not possible. Thus, the conclusion is that its not good to go ahead with Individualism. 

• A perception on a bilateral issue or a strategical issue is not based on the historical and geographical facts but it is deduced based on some other factors. For example, the Siachen Conflict is not be taken on the existing and historical facts but they are based on some gauche views like - its not worth to spend crores of rupees for a piece of mountain. 

• The perception on Social issues changes instantly. For example, if Baba Ramdev talks about Alcohol, its funny and crack jokes on it but if the same issue is taken up by Aamir Khan, suddenly the hormones realize that it has to be taken seriously even if what Aamir Khan preaches is a bigger joke. 

Neo-Bimbos: 
These are my favorite. The urban India is their stronghold and they often appear in Reality shows or try to get into reality shows by some personal interview/audition process (some claim that it’s tougher to crack these them than IIT-JEE or IAS/IPS exams.) 

• Support Jan Lokpal bill and refer Singapore lokpal bill and passing gyan to others on how it has brought down corruption. 
• Share photos on Facebook on social evils, liberty, equality etc… and ask others to ‘share’ and ‘like’ it. 
• Register yourself to a NGO and talk any crap and still say that you are doing good for society. 
• Eat, Live, Sleep and Pray ‘Green’. Go Green, ask others to go green. 
• Candlelight parades, even if you don’t know what you are walking for.. 
• Slut Walks (Fill this space) 
• Assertively support Right To Education (RTE), and express shock that it is being implemented after 80 years of independence. 
• Say – “We are a secular country, we need to give reservations to the minorities”. 
• If you are clever enough you can elude the questions like 'Chief Minister of the State' or 'President of India'. 

I see the space of Dangling Pointers growing the English media and see them a lot around me. They disassociate themselves from any ideology, thus it becomes little hard for a polemic to start a debate but a polemic always has ways to distort the stupidity with logic. The danger of these ‘Dangling Pointers’ are that they are slowly spreading into every political and social life, NGO’s, Committes which decide of important bills, Cultural groups etc… these dangling pointers make adjustments to the categories mentioned above and eventually spread the adhoc conclusions and stupidity which will make things even worse and remember the last statement given the definition of 'Dangling Pointers' "These are special cases of memory safety violations".

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