Calm down, Its just another life
By Agrata Kumari
For years, in the name of religion, nation, culture, tradition etc a group of people have committed enough autocracies. Be it assassination of peace loving Mahatma Gandhi, religion based rioting, harassing lovers, harassing liberal thinkers, harassing women, spreading hate against other nations/cultures/religions/castes etc via propaganda based on lies and deceit; this group has nothing to offer but hate. Violence, which is considered to be evil and to be used as the last resort, is their first choice. Such fascist groups are present in every country. The political parties who are not in power are guilty too. They too are in the game for fueling violence. Democracy is based on violence. The political power structure is based on violence. It has always been so since their origin and will remain so.
Yet another life was taken away today. That of Mohammad Ikhlaq. Brutally beaten to death by a mob. My sincere condolences to his family. My heart weeps for innocent lives that are lost at the hands of evil. Now I shall begin my rant not for political reasons but because I feel its necessary to do so.
Loosely speaking India has never understood the importance of separation of state and religion. India never understood how dangerous power can be and why the western developed civilized nations are suspicious of governmental power. India never understood how deadly nationalism can be and what monster it can become. India never understood how democracy fragments the society and is nothing more than mob-rule. India never understood how socialism can destroy and corrupt the morals of its citizens and make them irresponsible. Fortunately for India they never had to deal with the dark ages nor had to face mass scale murders during the two world wars nor undergo a total collapse as a failed communist state.But it is not so that they have never experienced tyranny of some form or the other. It is not so that during the freedom struggle our influential leaders didn't warn us about the menace of nationalism, religious fanaticism and fascism; like Tagore and Gandhi did. The notion of human rights in India is a joke. The disparity between the classes and culture is huge in this part of the world. The ruling elite enjoys all the luxuries and power where as others either have to die or lick up their boots to survive. This tradition is not new to this part of the world but has been so for thousands of years. First it started by means of caste-ism, religion-ism, regionalism etc where one section dominated over other section of the society, and then came the foreign rulers. To please the foreign rulers and get benefits from them a class of Indian elites always preferred to align with them for benefits. This is evident from the fact that during the rules of the Moguls and then of the British, only a handful were able to rule over millions. We all know the stories of how a few fought against these foreign rulers, where as the majority didn't bother.
I know and I am aware that this write up will serve no purpose than being yet another blog post and nor I am expecting that this write up should evoke any sentiments within you. But I believe that when blood flows, ink must flow. This post is just me standing up and voicing my objection. As I have said before in my previous posts, that we lost the notion of self esteem and self respect long ago. We do not believe nor understand natural inalienable human rights. Nor do we realize the importance of it. We don't like owning responsibility for our actions. We are over optimistic and believe in magical overnight transformations of society rather than accepting that miracles don't happen and progress takes time, capital and freedom. If we had this understanding we wouldn't have elected fascist or socialist power hungry liars into office, right from the day of power was handed over by the British elite to the Indian elite.
Now I will be wasting my time if I don't come to the point. There are certain natural rights of men which we civilized human beings living in civilized society believe in. Rights like right to self ownership, right to individual liberty and the right to property. If the natural right to self ownership is denied or not recognized then we are all born a slave. The one who says that you don't own yourself is basically saying "you are my slave". The question is do we own ourselves or not? If yes then we have the right to decide what we do with our bodies, what we consume, what we believe in, what we like, what we dislike etc as long as we are not violating natural rights of anyone else. Therefore, if some individuals in our society form a group and call themselves governments, and acting in a governmental fashion refuse to recognize the right to self ownership, then all we become are mere slaves to those individuals. Therefore a non-slave is free to choose what he wants to consume, and what he wants to do with his body within the limits of his individual freedom. The man who was killed by the mob was well within his unalienable human rights as a human being to consume what he wants until and unless he wasn't harming any other fellow human being. This right was denied to him. Even the right to life was not denied. Why? Simply because we are all puppets at the hands of the politicians? Or is it because we have bigger issues, like getting free WiFi connection from the government, than valuing a life? If the government promises to make you a millionaire at the cost of thousand lives will you accept it? Remember that the seeds of hate were sown by the very government in power right now. And this hate was funded by us who are now disappointed with it. If we fund it via taxation, is there not blood on our hands now? We can blame the government and the mob who murdered Mohammad Ikhlaq but what about our role? Isn't our inertness towards governmental oppression and our participation in this evil political apparatus allow them to continue with this hegemonic relationship?
The answer is simple. We don't care about lives or other people and nor do we care about the notion of human rights. We don't care because its just a life lost of someone we don't know. We don't care because people die here every day. We don't care because we alone cannot change the system nor fight it. We don't care because we are scared slaves. We don't care because we are weak and helpless. We don't care because we don't want to face the reality. If we did, we wouldn't dare have a government with absolute power to disregard our rights at will. If any change has to come in this country it has to begin by having some self esteem, some guts, and some dignity. As long as individual rights and property rights are not taken seriously, we can forget being a civilized society, ever. Malcolm X once said "No body can give you freedom, nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you are a man, you take it". So deal with this fact of life, if you refuse to remain a slave or a puppet.
