India Burning !!

I sit in a far-off place, look at the plight of my country and shake my head in disbelief.

Another 100 people died in an incident last week. Some say that it was the work of the Maoists. Some say otherwise. The needle of suspicion has still not settled. Unsurprisingly politics is acting as the spring.

I read about the twin sisters, Shirin and Sharmin, who died in the accident. They were going to visit Mumbai for the first time and were mighty excited. Sadly they took the journey of no return. Anyone who outcries for the human rights of the Maoists or tries to romanticize their rebellion should have had one look at the girls' cherubic faces. Smashed by metal and smeared with blood they lay there in the wreckage.

What is this? What's wrong with these people ?!

Be it the "fake democracy" that Ms. Roy has been carping about. Or be it the excesses committed by the govt in the past. No reason is reason enough to do this. No cause is good enough for expiation.

Now we have to understand that we are a relatively 'young' nation. We are bound to have some problems. Every nation does. The US even after 150 years of its independence had problems of segregation and racial discrimination. I mention this since their situation then was quite akin to our situation now. The blacks were left to struggle in the dungeons of poverty & segregation while the whites enjoyed the fruits of the nation's progress. Similar reasons have been cited by the Maoists for their struggle.

What we need to see though is how they came out of it. Not by killing policemen & sabotaging trains. Not by burning bridges either. But through acts of non-violent protests and civil disobedience. Their acts engendered crisis situations which highlighted the inequities between the two races and entailed immediate action by the govt.

There were protests like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Greensboro sit-ins. The whole movement was largely non-violent. And they did it in the face of severe oppression and violence from the whites.

Call me naive but I think that Gandhi guy had the idea right. So did King Jr.

An eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind !!

But who's gonna tell the Maoists ?! Ms. Roy ?!