Wipe your tears off

ARE NT WE ASHAMED OF OURSELVES ?

It shames me to write about it now on the backdrop of a burning ,agitating and helpless nation on the wake of the recent seizure on her financial nerve, but I shall never the less give vent to my emotions on it now, because our nation wakes only when we are shaken awake and hence the best time to blog about it would be before Sehwag s hair implantation takes the front news again!!

Terrorism or not , I am not informed enough to decide .. Religious fundamentalism or not .. we are not in a position to take a call on it .. “Violent upraisal of the oppressed or not , None of us have the right to decide” , but whatever we call it , this venomous serpent has the poison to sting the nation to paralysis if not to a fatality.

So as patriotic citizens and educated ones , let us try and awaken ourselves to the reality ..the reality of the Universe-“ call it the Newton s third law or cause and effect relationship”, somewhere down the line when we are affected, it means that we as individuals have affected the cause too . Hard to digest , tough to reconcile with ..but TRUE. “Reality bites ,but this is Reality”. The fact that this spurt of anger and action would soon die down ,be forgotten by all of us who are not direct victims of this act of cowardice is what gives the courage for an act like this.

Whenever there is an attack , one gets to realize that there is a motive even higher than money.. higher than religion.. higher than even Life .The motive that motivates the millions of sons to abandon their families , their money , their reasoning and eventually their life for a cause , a cause they believe is the sole motive of their existence. What drives them ? where are we getting disconnected ? It is difficult to contemplate about the murderers of infants and innocent citizens of our soils with a humane perspective. It is almost impossible to go beyond the hatred to try and reason out that there might exist a reason even beyond the ones of Money.. religion and brainwashing that is fed upon us day in and day out by the responsible media and Governments .

Why am I being a proponent of a truce ?!? well .. it s kind of tough to see the reasoning behind it , but the only thing that comes to my mind is :: “what else can we helpless people do ?” we can’t build a fortress around us and defeat the very purpose of staying alive .. what else can we do ?.. can we retaliate . “ It s easy for someone like me sitting in the confinities of a secure ( supposedly secure) MBA college and write that we must deal with it tactically and humanely , but the only reasoning I am trying to make is that “ An Eye for an Eye would leave the world blind” I know .. I know , very seldom youngsters subscribe to the idea of such old fashioned gandhism in our X generation . this is for those who are inspired by the Peace lyrics of rock bands .. taken from the song by IRON MAIDEN which is apt for the present situation:

liberty or death, what we so proudly hail
once you provoke her, rattling of her tail
never begins it, never, but once engaged...
never surrenders, showing the fangs of rage

So yes, there is a grave problem .. what is the problem ?? “Is it ..Terrorism… Religious fundamentalism ??,..” no these are just the symptoms and one cannot cure the disease by handling the symptoms .. “ heavy security may alleviate the attacks but will not solve the problem:” .. “No , being more vigilant might stop a casualty or two but will not cure the disease” . The need for the moment is to go back to the fundamentals of our NATION which has survived unphased the acid tests of British rule.. the torments of the Natural disasters .. the fangs of religious fanaticism . The cure is in Taking pride of who we are and what we stand for :The cure lies in reviving the India of the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi or Akbar ..

The cure is in revisiting the culture of our yore the biggest gift of Humanity “ THE GIFT OF TOLERANCE” . We might need to, for a moment forget(for our own benefit.. I know forgive would be too big a word) the scars and move on into creating an atmosphere of mutual trust . This is my idea ( being a student , drilled into my encephalon is the style of proposing the suggestions in points , so I will take the seriousness of the situation as grave enough to get the mob s attention in spite of having not laying forth the ideas in a paragraph!!)

Let us first start respecting the views of our aggressors and sympathize with the wrong doings that we have done in their lives – be it the rapes in the North East by our respectable army or killings in the valley and the insensitiveness with which we deal the issue of the motive of a terror attack.. Let us become more aware of them. Let the media point out the shamefulness of these acts of cowardice that we commit and then try and reason out the vicious circle that we create.

The only way this could be done is by being more sensitive to these issues and listen intently and again trying and creating a nation wide urge to express solidarity with our brothers in the North East or the valley ... “I understand that anything against our army is deemed unpatriotic ..and unfair as it is the Army which stands by us when the insensitive and morons across the world want chaos , but it is better to rinse the stain before it gets scathed.

We in our college like all others were discussing on what we could do to show that we care about our existence and ruled out black bands or mourning as symbols of protest or solidarity . . These acts will do nothing .. nothing to solve the issue , nothing to soothe the victims either , so I trust that the plan of action could be : Since so much of the terror is attributed to be driven by religious fundamentalism , the religious heads of the nation should not only strongly condemn and hang their heads low on the issue but come and show that they really care.. by reaching out to the victims, creating a fund for the victims and sending a message that if there are people who donate for jehad, there are more of us who donate to stop the injustice. There must be a national level solidarity among the clerics that they would every time issue a fatwa against the terrorist and among the saints that they would every time criticize and blaspheme the traitors of the religion who kill others.

If we are not ready to treat the aggressors as humans who have been tried and severly ill treated or oppressed throughout and only subscribe to the media which portrays only a one sided picture of what we want to see .. which shows the aggressors as mere animals inflicting harm for their material pleasure we are grossly mistaken . If we tend to disbelieve that that the resentments and terrorism is created due to the grave circumstances people are put through , we have “NO RIGHT AS INDIANS TO BE PROUD OF THE MANBOOKER PRICE WINNER ARVIND ADIGA – who tells the story of an oppressed but determined person who in an urge to break his shakles of servitude and slavery cold bloodedly murders his beloved master who was as timid as the lamb because of what the master s relatives do to him and his family” – how powerfully and truly portrayed are the emotions of a normal human being .

It is for us to decide whether we would be proud to live a life of a State that would not compromise on it s strong stand on sensitive issues or a Nation that is sensitive to human emotions and serves well the doctrines of Democracy and Secularism and eventually triumph over the darkness of human intents.