Intolerance, chaos reigns all over the country, which is cemented and known by its pluralistic value systems. Are we serious enough to bring back confidence of the marginalized ensuring ‘security’ for ALL? Or are we setting stage for another pogrom?
By Mastufa Ahmed
The largest democracy of the world seems to have gotten into a gambit. Fear reek all over with govt set to move past an indigenous issue without actually handling it, once again.
‘Security’ issues plague India more than anything else –be it a rightful march against corruption, a demonstration by a tribal group, or a mere train journey. If one part of the country is sweltering with people butchering each other, other part is bellowing in panic with fear of more such frenzied tumult. At the backdrop of this hue and cry, another major scam hits the long list of Indian blemish with parliamentarians up in perennial blame games.
Northeast India set ablaze, ever since tensions sparked off in Assam. The closely guarded secret surfaced for one more time to withstand the test of time. The age-old crisis that popped up several times before hogging the limelight of the state found no takers this time as well. We lost, together, for one more time.
The issue went viral now making lives of many dejected, especially the north-easterners putting up across the country. The spilt is wide open with ‘hatred’ contaminating innocent souls, leading them to ‘do or die.’
Haven’t we seen enough of bloodbaths and its consequences?
The seething frustrations, swelling up all across caused by such situation, has started getting manifested in several form factors –mobile-spread rumor, inflammatory tweets, hate articles by enraged users, and more.
Do India take adequate cognizance of the hopes of the diverse, ethno-religious and cultural entities living within the state? Are issues kept alive to get political mileage, as many argue? Where lies the rub in?
What makes the conscience of Indians so anesthetized? What makes us so ruthless? What routes us to massacre? How do we, or for that matter our machinery, turn so naïve, helpless in times of crisis?
Why do we tend to side ourselves, and pass the buck raising fingers, instead of moderating it, together? Haven’t we seen enough of bloodbaths and its consequences before?
India has a history of letting the so-called values of the secular nation go overshadowed, not triumphant.
Shall we ever learn to value the values of India –the land of saints and babas? Are we still in the stone age of humanism? Why does ‘intolerance’ get precedence so readily giving space to group-ism and not harmony?
What takes us to an utter failure every time we face an emergency? How come organizational machinery fail to respond to the call of need?
We forget that the majesty of India lies in its being pluralistic. The world knows us as being multi-cultural, however, the truth is that the insiders are always in an uncompromising agitation. The tag of war never dissuades. In the name of ethnic cleansing, illegal migrants, and other similar euphemisms, the country is held hostage by insiders! The typical Indian style of skirmishing issues by pulling against each other takes us all nowhere.
The issue of Assam is as much prompted by leaders and social scientists as much by miscreants. If the black sheep have done it, the rest have let it go viral. “A CBI preliminary probe shows bigger conspiracy behind Assam violence and the agency is learnt to have zeroed in on certain people who might have been involved in the incident that sparked off the communal conflagration”, says a story by the Times of India.
The evil in us will never wear away unless we wish to nip it. When Kokrajar was reeling under utter unrest, the real evil started cropping up in other parts, initially in Mumbai and later in Bangalore. The harrowing evil will herald more unrest moments until bold steps are taken to put an end to it.
Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of India that has always been known as a peace-loving city with people of many cultures living in, proved otherwise. When trainloads of desolate people of northeast India made their back-home journey, it seemed as if ‘don’t stop me, lemme go back to my home, I don’t want to die’ is what they were begging only thing for. They never knew evil was traveling right with them; to end up being thrown off the speeding train.
Parliament, and studios all over the country may have brainstormed the issue umpteen times over the last two decades. We didn’t see any impactful output so far!
In India we agree to disagree, mostly; each issue has its own league of ‘for’ and ‘against’ champions rock steady with their positions. Who knows, there might be people who divide Olympians when they win medals. We are always in a scuffle being this side or that side. We do coalitions, but for reason other than to actually alliance the varying representations.
Will coming out of league ever happen for the wider interest of the country?
It is easier to create chaos today than ever! The explosion of smart devices, with Internet tying everyone, has changed the entire landscape.
Internet will remain a free zone; no matter how stringent measures you embrace to censor its content. So if netizens are journalists in one side, they are also the ones who can create havoc all over with a simple MMS. Bangalore mess is a testimony to that.
The govt has already banned hundreds of accounts across Twitter, Facebook and Google, having contents they deem provocative. The bigger question is how deep shall you be able to dig? Can this unruly censorship hold back Internet users from sharing what they feel strongly about? Internet is only set to blow up in coming days with more and more users getting hooked everyday.
Ja rot e tha bot e (truth gets into rumor mill), goes an old saying. And rumor, mischief or otherwise, can be made go viral in no time today.
Panic subsides, fear remains, and that’s how pluralistic values diminish. Gap between starts widening and intolerance springs up.
The sporadic incidents happening across the nook and corner of the country are an offshoot of the mutual callousness led by vested interests.
Instead of putting an end to the problem, we are better off burring it off the memory lane.
When PM announced a relief package of 300 Cr, it looked more like an attempt to deface the symptom of the larger issue and not to uproot the bare bones of the root problem. And of course the typical India problem –shall the grant ever arrive at the victims? If so, when and how much? The pipeline will eat out, as we all know, the lion’s share.
It is over month, and the homeless are still languishing being nowhere. Probably the famous dialogue of Amresh Puri, let the public do whatever they want, just bide the time, things will come to shape automatically, in Nayek film, better act out here.
One hundred companies of security forces have been deployed in the riot-affected zones of the Bodoland, going by a report. The bigger question is ‘is policing what the riot-hit starving people strewn across schools and orphanages in Assam are looking for? Are the infiltrators as tagged by mainstream India, ghosts? Don’t blood run in their veins? Do they have the word Bangladeshi scripted on their forehead? If so, are they the only unlawful infiltrators in the receiving end of the worst ever slaughter? How come outsiders get into our sublime land so simply?
And how come we look past the bloodshed just to discover something else?
It is clear that nobody wants to nip this issue in the bud; rather stakeholders of varying genres want it to be hopping around, to play typical Indian politics. A former beaurocrat rightly said in an article in the context of an age-old Indian issue, ‘7-day is what is needed to resolve the issue, as long as stakeholders are ready to make this happen.’
Those, spoiling harmony should be, will be punished…are the common jargons that pour in from the so-called netas of the powerhouse. Never ever have we seen politicians and policy makers come to a universal podium and debate issues to only resolve them! Sealing of the porous Indo-Bangladesh border, for instance, which has long been overdue could have been undertaken long back.
Lack of political compromise entails to be reason for many ineffective debates in India today.
So the message that comes out by now is ‘we will keep burring the symptoms by mere appeasing the victims, the issue is composite enough to work out solutions for’, so lip servicing it once again.’
After all, relief money comes from public fund and is the easiest way to disburse sympathy.
The reality is, India has endured enough of massacres over the last three decades that may get replicated as a model by miscreants. More people will get to sharpen their shrapnel in coming days.
If we continue letting bone-chilling stories like Nellie, Gujarat, anti-Sikh violence and other massacres happen, public anguish will very soon explode to an extent that will really be expensive for everyone to bear the brunt of.
Here is hoping that before it’s too late, India goes for a clear political decision and a concerted will and an objective program of action. This will require visionary leaders with the ability to manage both these operations ably.
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Mastufa Ahmed is a journalist based in Delhi.