Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a mouthful name few would recognise. When the middle names are removed and the name mutates into Greta Thunberg, everyone knows that she is an internationally-acclaimed climate activist. Born in Sweden on January 3, 2003, she is still a teenager. Few have achieved such fame at such a young age.

One may question her activism that borders on self-torture, but few can question the issue of climate change that she focuses on. All that she wants is that the world leaders should give due attention to climate change as, otherwise, we would be bequeathing a more dangerous, inhabitable world to the generations to come.

It is not even a fortnight since unprecedented, flash floods devastated a vast area in Uttarakhand. Workers building tunnels were trapped in the tunnels they were building. I watched a video that depicted a heroic attempt to save the miners trapped under the earth. I could see how happy and jubilant a miner was when he came out of the mine, through an opening made by the rescue team. Alas, not all the miners were lucky like him.

The flash flood in a calm, winter river on a bright sunny day was a strong warning from nature to make appropriate amends. Alternatively, we can ignore such warnings and wait for the doomsday! Uttarakhand is ecologically fragile and susceptible to tectonic shifts in its underbelly, as was brought home when earthquake struck the region causing death and destruction in 2013 that claimed hundreds of lives and property worth billions of rupees. 

This time the flash floods were caused by the melting of snow in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. Hindus believe that the presiding deity of the Himalayas is Lord Shiva, who can be both benign and destructive. When he dances his ananda tandava, the whole ecosystem fills with power and beauty. When he does the vinasha tandava, there is total destruction. 

Whether you like it or not, that is exactly what Greta Thunberg has been saying — climate change, unless controlled, will cause devastation the like of which we have not imagined. We have seen how the tiniest Coronavirus has caused havoc to the whole world in a matter of months. 

Let’s not ignore her just because she is a teenager. As the world warms up, icebergs will melt and glaciers will begin to wither, causing floods and other indescribable damages. The level of water in the seas will rise devouring large land mass in all the continents.

Why Greta Thunberg appeals to the young is not just because she was a child until January 3 but because she preferred to set a personal example in the struggle to reduce global warming. When she insisted that her parents stop flying, her mother, an actor, gave up flying not because she loved climate but because she loved her daughter. 

She adopted a simple lifestyle and went vegan to promote her belief that we as individuals can also do a lot to reduce global warning. In short, she practices what she believes in, unlike many of us who say something and do something else. Yet, for all her international celebrity status, she is just a teenager, susceptible to the pulls and pressures of the biological changes that a teenager’s body undergoes.

Thunberg did the mistake of sharing a toolkit on her Twitter handle. It detailed the ways in which one could support the farmers’ agitation. It also exposed the amateurishness of her campaign. In the process, she identified some of the persons involved in the drafting of the toolkit exposing them to the needless attention of the government.

Nonetheless, it did not make much sense when the External Affairs Ministry reacted to tweets like the ones made by Thunberg and singer Rihanna. Why should a government, as powerful as Narendra Modi’s, which can send the Chinese packing from the areas they captured surreptitiously in the Ladakh region, be perturbed by the tweets of some celebrities? And, why should the external affairs minister waste his time to pick holes in their tweets?

Celebrities are also individuals. Unlike ordinary mortals, the celebrities command greater attention from the public. Once when Amitabh Bachchan tweeted that banks would have greater business if they gave loans to buy petrol to fill car tanks, everyone enjoyed the pun as the petrol price had hit Rs 70. It is a different matter that the same actor does not tweet when petrol price crosses Rs 100! Probably, he knows that the present government is not headed by a ‘weakling’ like Manmohan Singh but by someone who is reputed to have a 56-inch chest.

In the case of Thunberg, worse things happened. She had a supporter in India, named Disha Ravi from Bengaluru. Let me admit, I had no clue about her until the Delhi Police registered a case against her for her involvement in the toolkit, accidentally tweeted by Thunberg.

Of course, Disha Ravi was not an unknown person. One of my colleagues told me how her teenaged daughter was passionately involved in the Fridays for Future movement initiated by Greta and carried forward in India by Disha Ravi. The movement aims at making people aware of climate change and how it impacts life in all its manifestations. She deserves support in this.

A socially-conscious girl, my colleague’s daughter felt more bothered about climate change, environmental pollution and ecological decay than her own well-being while preparing for the 12th CBSE examination. One reason why she got involved in the movement was because of Disha’s charisma. Like her idol, Disha was also a person who believed that she should set a personal example while leading the movement. By the way, her grandparents were farmers who toiled from dawn to dusk to make a living.

That is precisely why the Fridays for Future appealed to my colleague’s daughter in distant Delhi. Our country needs young leaders like Disha Ravi who is our future. But what did the police do? While claiming that all the formalities were completed before arresting her from her house in Bengaluru and bringing her to Delhi, the fact remains that the police did not go by the rulebook.

As Disha Ravi told the judge, she did nothing but edit a sentence in the toolkit but she was sent to five days’ of police custody. The judge was considerate enough to reduce the remand period from seven days to five days!

What has this 22-year-old done to warrant such a harsh treatment? It is ridiculous to even think that she could have destabilised the government. It only exposes the weakness of the government.

As she remains in police custody at the time of writing, another young girl, Malala Yousafzai, often referred to as Malala, has received a threat from the Taliban foot soldier who tried to kill her. He wants her to return to her native Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan so that he can shoot her again, this time with greater precision.

What this Taliban man said is not much different from what a minister in Haryana said about “anti-nationals”. Anyone who opposes a government policy is often referred to as an anti-national, who needs to be dealt with under the sedition laws of the country. 

The minister wanted such people to be “destroyed”. True, he later clarified that what he meant was destruction of such ideas, not persons. Is editing a sentence a greater crime than openly advocating violence?

While Disha Ravi remained in police custody, a BJP leader tried to inflame passions over the killing of a youth by a group of youths belonging to a particular community in Delhi. The police insist that the killing was the result of enmity but he tried to portray it in gross communal terms. He was the same leader who instigated violence in Northeast Delhi while President Donald Trump was in India.

How I wish the Delhi Police had taken action against such characters! External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had a point that persons like Rihanna should study the pros and cons of a situation before commenting on it. No one can object to it.

Immediately after Greta Thunberg and Rihanna tweeted, many celebrities in India, including cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, tweeted in support of the government vis-a-vis the farmers’ agitation. An investigation in Maharashtra has found that theirs was a command performance. The BJP’s cyber wing had a role in it. In fact, the ruling party has thousands of cyber warriors who can attack and destroy the credibility of those who oppose the party line.

Recently, the whole nation saw how the BJP leadership, including Home Minister Amit Shah, tried to persuade actor Rajni Kant to join politics, align with the BJP and lead the campaign in the coming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Was it because Rajni Kant is ideologically close to the BJP? No, the BJP just wanted to cash in on his popularity.

That is what the party did in the case of the first woman IPS officer Kiran Bedi. A greenhorn in politics, she was projected as the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in Delhi. Under her leadership the party won just three seats in Delhi. She could not win her own seat.

Then she was sent to Puducherry as governor where she did everything possible to please her political masters and destabilise the Congress government. Once her usefulness was over, she was dismissed from the job using a Presidential order. She proved to be as expendable as the curry leaves in Kerala cuisine.

By admitting Metroman Sreedharan into the party and projecting him as the party’s chief ministerial candidate in Kerala, the BJP wants to try the Kiran Bedi experiment once again. It is a different matter that he is now 88. He crossed the Modi-fixed barrier of 75 under which LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were pushed into the Margdarshak Mandal. 

For a party chasing celebrities, it is unbecoming of it to castigate persons like Rihanna and Greta Thunberg. Whatever be the role of Disha Ravi, advocate and activist Nikita Jacob and environmentalist Shantanu Mulak, both of whom have secured interim bail, in the drafting of the toolkit, they can’t do anything as the matter is in the court of the Modi government.

It is now nearly five months since the farmers have been agitating against the three farm-related laws the government had enacted in haste. If today the Prime Minister invites the farmers for talks, they would gladly accept it and reach the place on the day fixed and at the appointed time. It is left to Modi to convince the farmers and persuade them to call off the agitation.

A political leader like Modi should know how to handle an agitation like the one the farmers have been leading. It is not by erecting spikes, denying water supply and toilet facilities that the farmers should be dealt with. The government is totally mistaken if it thinks that the agitation is foreign-inspired.

If today Disha Ravi has become the international face of the agitation, it is the high-handed approach of the government which is to blame. The results of the recent civic elections in Punjab where in some constituencies the BJP secured lesser votes than NOTA show that the farmers have the support of the common people.

If Modi thinks that constructing a grand temple alone matters in the country, he is mistaken. The people are bothered more about bread and butter issues, than a grand temple. The sooner this realisation dawns on the government, the better it would be for Modi and Company. 

Meanwhile, let Disha Ravi do what she is good at, energising schoolchildren to promote practices that have a beneficial effect on climate. Her rightful place is her home and among her young colleagues, not a police station or a jail!

ajphilip@gmail.com