Vaibhav And Divya: We Say Sorry On Behalf Of This Country

Statement Issued By A Civil Society Delegation That Visited Sunped

23 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

A civil society delegation that included activists and senior gandhians visited Sunped village of Haryana today. This delegation includes Swami Agnivesh (Vishwa Arya Samaj), Prof H P Gangnegi (Harijan Sevak Sangh), Ram Mohan Rai (Hali Panipati Trust), Phoolchand Sharma (Harijan Sevak Sangh), Veena Behen (Mahila Chetna Kendra), Urmila Behen (Sarvoday Ashram), Shehzad Poonawala (Social Activist), Kashif Ahmed Faraz (APCR), Kiran Shaheen (Social Activist) and Ravi Nitesh (Social Activist).

This delegation met with family of victims and people of village, conveyed its sympathy to family and appealed to people to maintain harmony.

Delegation’s statement upon this visit is here:

“We, the people who believe in peace, harmony and non violence , condemn the incident of Sunped, Ballabhgarh where a dalit family got attacked and it resulted in loss of two innocent lives of their children Vaibhav and Divya and injuries to family.

We see that it is not the first case where we have witnessed the cast based discrimination and hatred along with division among hearts of people. But we also see that in recent pattern of rising insecurity among society and rising threats to religious minorities, dalits and tribals, no one is feeing safe. This feeling of insecurity is also very effective in people who talk about rationality, logics and who try to make people aware about threats of communalism and conservatism.

We also see that talking about these issues have been blamed as appeasement and politicizing the issue, but who can deny the fact that two little children have been burnt alive in this home. What was the fault of these children, just their birth that had happened in dalit family?

This incident is a blot upon face of our so called society where we talk about being civilized, modernized. It is a blot upon government that is creating propaganda of development and linking villages to internet without fulfilling its own responsibility on ground. As per constitution of India, promoting social harmony is among duties of government, but unfortunately in recent times, supporters of government are publicly involved in creating outrage and damaging social , secular, intellectual fabric of country. This uncontrolled behavior of their supporters and silence of government over all these only gives a message that it is incapable to provide safety to common people and it is only supporting ideology of social disintegration for its political gains.

We strongly condemn role of state and central governments over this incident. Chief Minister of Haryana Govt Mr. Khattar is busy in advising and deciding who should stay in India and who should go, he is busy in giving such derogatory statements in media interviews, but he has no time to look upon safety of their own people. On the other hand, there is an extremely irresponsible and derogatory statement came from none other than the central government’s minister Mr. V K Singh who did not feel ashamed while comparing this incident with example of stone pelting upon dogs. We condemn his statement and we call people of India to respond appropriately through peaceful manners of his statement.

We, who have visited here in sympathy of the family, also appeal to all Indian families to take care of your co-citizens . We appeal everyone to not coming in communal and violent propaganda of right wing. We appeal to people to promote harmony in society at their own level.

We also say sorry to all of you, for the fact that despite being in 21st century, when we are reaching at moon and mars and feel developed society, we still have inequality, caste discrimination, intolerance and violence; and with all these factors, all our development in outer world becomes null , as we are too undeveloped from our inside. Bringing such a development was a collective responsibility of our and previous generations, but we hope that we need to strive for it.

We again demand with government to take immediate attention towards social issues where people are losing their lives due to intolerance of other groups/class. If it will not stop, nothing could be more appropriate to define what we call a failed state. “

Issued by civil society delegation members Swami Agnivesh (Vishwa Arya Samaj), Prof H P Gangnegi (Harijan Sevak Sangh), Ram Mohan Rai (Hali Panipati Trust), Phoolchand Sharma (Harijan Sevak Sangh), Veena Behen (Mahila Chetna Kendra), Urmila Behen (Sarvoday Ashram), Shehzad Poonawal (Social Activist), Kashif Ahmed Faraz (APCR), Kiran Shaheen (Social Activist) and Ravi Nitesh (Social Activist)