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 ?!

War And Peace

“Only the dead have seen the end of war”.

As the world debates Obama’s decision on the Afghanistan War and anticipates the result of the troop surge there, I cannot help but acknowledge the veracity of these words.

The Iraq War has ended. The war in Afghanistan is very much on. One in Iran looms.

People dying virtually every day in Pakistan. Radical religious monomaniacs wrapping themselves in dynamite and blowing up innocent people. Maoist violence in India. Thousands vanquishing as a result. LTTE insurgency in SL that lasted decades, killing thousands. Genocides in Tibet. Israel-Palestine conflict. Iran-Iraq War. World War I, World War II. The list is endless. The casualties uncountable. The destruction unfathomable.

US may come back blaring the victory trumpet from Afghanistan but they’d forever remain leery of the Islamic nations. Who knows where the next threat could come up from? Iran for one surely hates the American guts. On the other hand Taliban could win the war but what can they possibly do that would make their people's lives better in the face of sanctions and isolation from the rest of the world. They'd then look for a new target to vent out their anger/frustration. Either way the war won't end.

If the Maoists’ secessionist tactics work and they get autonomy would they be able to prosper severed from mainland India? What would Pakistan gain by accquiring control of Kashmir when they can't do anything for the well-being of its people. No one is going to budge and only a few more million are going to die.

Obama posited in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "For make no mistake, Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

This is perhaps a Commander-In-Chief justifying his war with glib speech or perhaps this is an erudite man making a very profound statement. Take your pick. I think it is the latter.

What a conundrum we are in. War is necessary for the upkeep of Peace.

New generations living in fear. Children struggling in refugee camps when they should be in schools building their future. Fathers burying their young sons. Ailing kids. Mothers with nothing to feed them. Houses razed to the ground in the calm of the night. Nothing but mere rubble on the streets. Nothing but mere pain in the heart. We better get used to this.

Oh and btw, a Happy New Year to All !!