Sachin caught in Crab Mentality?
Just read an article about a case being filed in Bihar challenging the selection of Sachin Tendulkar for Bharat Ratna and charging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde with hurting people‘s sentiments and ironically Sachin also has been mentioned as the accused. Also a complaint lodged by an RTI activist to EC questioning the award to Sachin.
Its incidents like this that remind me of a story about Indian crab mentality.
The story goes; a dockyard in London had on-display many containers full of live crabs brought from different countries around the world, including Indian crabs. The lids of all the containers were closed except for one container which was open form the top.
A perplexed visitor who was passing by asked the dockyard owner why only this one container‘s lid was open from the top and why not the other containers. The dockyard owner smiled and replied: If we opened the lid of these closed containers from respective countries, all the crabs inside would climb and walk out of the containers and scatter all over, as they had a lot of unity. However this open container contains Indian crabs. Every time an Indian crab tried to climb up the container, another crab would pull it down and therefore none of these crabs would ever leave the container.
This story reflects ironic truth in many ways of our country especially when people share this short sighted mindset - If I can‘t have it, neither can you!
There is no denying there are zenith number of people who deserve the Bharat Ratna, who haven‘t got their dues yet. But that doesn‘t warrant anybody to bring down the glory of an awardee who is a Legend in his own right.