|
Young World
My India... not for burning
P. Raghu Nandan
|
Violence and communal rage thrive because we have created the right environment for it. The solution too lies with us. We have the power to heal...
|
In 1979, Jamshedpur was in the grip of communal violence. The Tata's who practically run that industrial township put out a public interest advertisement that read "Jamshedpur is not for burning because India is not for burning''. Communal clashes have been there for a long time and have nearly become a part of the fabric of this country. In Calcutta during Partition, it was the Direct Action Day. Gandhi as a one-man mission saved another blood bath in Noakhali. Before the days of Partition until the present flare up in Gujarat, communal clashes have occurred in what seems like regular intervals. There is a tragic loss of lives and destruction of property. Who are the heroes and who are the villains? If you were to ask the people who burnt the train carriages, they could probably give you many reasons why they were right. If you were to ask the rioters in Ahmedabad, they too would have their reasons. Ultimately there is but one victim — India. So, who is responsible for these clashes? Who are these people? Do they have financial problems? Do they worry about the future? Did they face the every day hardships we do? Or, are they just fanatics waiting to pounce? Look carefully, and you will see that these people are just like you and me. They are part of this whole we call India. They are my fellow countrymen and the people who died are also fellow Indians. We are responsible, because collectively we are India. To quote John Donne, "Every Man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; Do not send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee''.
It does not matter that I live far away from the scene of the carnage; a small portion of me has died with it and a small portion of you. This is not an emotional, sentimental patriotic piece; it is a hard-nosed look at things. The only way out is for each one of us to take responsibility for these acts, a collective ownership so to say, because collectively we are one. The causes are varied and the persons differ. When we remove the causes and the groups from the statements, the only thing that remains is the hate. We take sides, we look at the logic, and we say this is better than that We are of that mindset that triggers off communal passions.
Every idea needs the correct `soil' to grow. If we took people or incidents from the pages of History and put them down in the modern world, they may not succeed. Not because their ideas or actions are not good enough, but the right `soil' would be absent. Like the mango tree — it would grow in the tropics, not in the cold thin air of the upper Himalayas; or the walrus — it enjoys the bracing air of the Arctic and will not frolic in the warm seas of the Bay of Bengal. Each needs the appropriate environment to flourish. If violence and communal rage flourished, we have made that environment. We have prepared the appropriate soil for those seeds to take root and grow.
The whole may be considered as the sum of its various parts, we as individuals are the parts. We contribute to that mind set, to the social cauldron coming to a boil. If we do not make the change, we could disappear in a swirling mushroom cloud of destruction. The solution begins with us, not in some remote geographical corner. The healing starts with us accepting that responsibility. It comes with an acceptance deep down of that one simple fact that "India is not for burning''.
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Young World
|
