I’m not one to get angry quickly anymore. I used to be one of those hot-headed kids with quick tempers who reacted violently to every unpleasant thing that happened, I’ve come a long way from that. But yesterday, I was angry. The last I remember of feeling this sudden, untameable rage was after the news of violence at Ramjas College broke out and our WhatsApp messages were flooded with pictures of students, some my friends, heckled and beaten. To that, I reacted quickly, without thinking with no care in the world about the consequences. It was reckless of me, I’ll agree but it needed to be done. Ramjas was covered for a whole week, various debates on all kinds of prime time news channels with the so-and-sos from every party, organisation.
On December 6, a man was accused of love jihad, hacked to death and burned alive, and the whole incident was taped by the nephew of the psychopath responsible for it as he screamed into the screen telling the world of his ‘deeds of greatness’. This incident was debated a total of one day for a few hours. I get it’s not as entertaining as watching old men debating if a 20-year-old girl’s threats in this country were fair or not, so maybe this is why they didn’t run the story for too long. Another story that they ran extensively recently was of another young girl, Hadiya. Again, sad old men debated for hours, day after day whether the man she loved was correct or not. I want to laugh and cry at the same time because clearly, it seems the fourth pillar of democracy has its priorities straight. To my eyes, I see this pillar being crushed bit-by-bit under the pressures put by the boss above.
Every morning I wake up and wonder what we have become as a nation in all of 3 years. Hateful, intolerant and violent savages. We are justifying violence against students, we are justifying murders of journalists. We are justifying mass mob lynchings and not just justifying the rewarding of men accused of the crime with government jobs. How do we plan on justifying what the whole nation saw in the clip?
There is no justification here, there are no excuses anymore. It is time we snap out of the daydream of potential non-existent vikas that we’ve been tripping on for all these years. I write this not to tell you what happened and how terribly wrong it is and what led to this incident. We all know what led to this incident. The killer’s phone was full of hateful communal videos that had been circulating, the same videos that saner minds like ours dismiss calling it political propaganda but sick minds like his consider gospel. It is their duty and responsibility to share such content further and abide by.
The Prime Minister asked a rally of thousands if the Congress wanted mandir or masjid. With no jobs and the economy down the drain, I’m assuming we will need various places of worship to pray at. At the end, maybe God will come save us from the turbulence that is to follow such provocative and dangerous discourses.
Since we are asking questions in the country these days, I’ll ask you one. Do we want this to be the discourse in our country, knowing the kind of violence it leads to and the monsters it has the potential to create?
It’s time we all start asking ourselves this question and answering it. India set an example of non-violence for the world. As the youth of this nation-the future, let’s call a spade a spade, start smarter conversations, condemn all violence and make sure we don’t tarnish that legacy.