KESARI YA HARA? Let’s Find Out The Color In Which You Shall Bleed..
By Suvi Jain
01 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org
Long, long ago, there lived a girl who felt new and beautiful, deeply in love..smiled for absolutely no reasons and lived in that marvel and her dreams, her sighs of relief in his smiles, her haven in his arms, her peace in his presence and then, she bumped into reality.
She was never abused as a child, nor did she belong to the ‘dalit’ community; she never had to endure with a financial-crisis, malnutrition, molestation on the basis of her immediate-identity, a rape, ignorance of her right to education or fair-opportunities; never had to go-through an acid-attack or remarks on her skin not being “spotless and fair as fukc” or for not being too busty. She was decent-looking, remarkably-talented in various fields, well-read, well-traveled; a believer in the almighty and in-short, her presence couldn’t go unacknowledged. But what went terribly wrong in her case was the fact that she was interested and thoughtful as much about her country and where it was heading; she cared as much about the law not being implemented with its essence and spirit in minds of the executive, and about the judiciary and police consistently being at fault due to the constant push and pull by a handful of “temporary-chosen-representatives” dying to satisfy a majority of half-educated Indians who don’t mind rushing to conclusions when an A-list journalist, in a prime-time hour, designates identities to students or when a dominant and persuasive Irani speaks at a high-pitch in the parliament producing defective hear-say evidences which are disproved within hours by doctors and first-hand reports.
When I say that I haven’t been targeted as of now in the hands of the system and I am treated much like a “hindu” and encouraged to “behave” as one, I don’t mean that I have suffered any less, because when they try to treat a Rohith and an Umar as a pawn, they are considering me a tool as well. And well..well..well.. Call me names, challenge my patriotism, question my integrity and nationalism, I will not, ever, stop thinking, stop differing, stop dissenting, stop rebelling and stop struggling. The previous “rulers” were at least playing with our pockets, understandable still, these petty “karyakartas”(and I don’t blame the ‘sangha’ here) have dared to play with my mind and heart, with what I cherish and adore as my faith in my religion, my responsibility as an Indian-citizen and my very fundamental right to think and express.
When they sit and protest for days, claiming to have been inspired by Mao Zedong and say that they want to be a revolutionary-class, beyond their immediate-identities as muslims, hindus, SCs, OBCs, Christians; when they say that their heart-aches for a Yakub and an Afzal, for a Soni Suri or a Sister Meena Barwa; when they say that they claim “Purna-Swaraj”; they are not on a mission to over-throw the government or create a law and order crisis, they do it to tell the three organs of the constitution that this is not how they expect the legal-system of a “democratic-republic” to be functioning, and all they seek is constitutional-justice which is being denied to them or to fellow-citizens. To care and try to explore into details that I have a right to be informed of, and to in-turn speak-against something that I reasonably and evidently uphold as being morally, constitutionally or rationally “wrong” does not brand me as anyone but a responsible-citizen of a yet “developing-nation”. To fight for one’s very basic rights, like the right to breathe in a peaceful-space as those in the valley do, or may be to be able to differ from the government and its ideologies, or to protest-for and demand a fresh enactment or a re-check on a case which was wrongly-upheld long-back in a rush, so that the country never faces such an ignorance of justice, might offend somebody’s interest, but it cannot be treated as a misuse of liberty or deviation towards the anti-national side from what is perceived to be the side of the nationals.
Now, rather than giving a patient-ear to a rationale-chain of thoughts, coming from aware-citizens, the government gets all-touchy and insecure and the opposition gets all tricky and excited to have found something to create a buzz about and ruin the proper course of action in the parliament. They get busy in passing the buck amongst themselves, our poor majority is stuck between who to blame and who to listen-to, there is one-class in the society that doesn’t give a shit and is busy making money, getting high or playing poker, the Umars and Kanhaiys are behind bars, the “activists” finally get something to comment-upon as nobody otherwise pays any heed to their big-mouths, and the country is in action with the real issue of ‘justice-denial’ and ‘faulty-implementation of law’ lost somewhere in all this chaos. And we, the ever-considerate, so-called “learned-few” are left wondering and waiting for the age and time when our boyfriends and girlfriends will stop dumping us because we “belong” to a different caste or community.
P.S. As our girl has now gate-crashed the reality of what is “acceptable” and is waiting to find an Umar who thinks and grows beyond what is acceptable and reaches-out to what is ‘RIGHT’.
Suvi Jain is a student of legal-studies, Aligarh Muslim University and a pass-out of Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya