Editorial:-
The nation observed Sankalp Diwas on Thursday; a day when officials at official functions make officious resolutions towards national integration. India is an integrated nation in that it has only grown in size since Independence, not disintegrated, but regions still remain fractured, the people still segregated; so yes, the people could use integration. For that process to resume, people need to demand that events of the year 1984 which followed the day we now observe as Sankalp Diwas are never repeated. That is a wish that every Indian [and when we say Indian we mean the people, not its leaders who live by misplaced priorities and have no qualms about dredging up selective recollections of 1984] harboured in 1984, and yet, twenty years on, the wish remains unachieved. Politics and its mechanizations still manage to cleave the country, set the ground for every spark to become a conflagration, push integration further away. Such players find willing allies in the media which routinely loses focus, pushes tokenism and celebrates sensationalism and offer simplistic solutions. The Gujarat Riots, an undefensible scar on the country’s secular claims, hogs the media space [with or without sting operations] with demands for the head of the government and punishment for the perpetrators. All are valid demands and should be delivered, but can it be expected in a country where a worse pogrom of two decades earlier remains not only largely unpunished, but also largely ignored. This is not an attempt to excuse the sluggishnes that inflicts the Gujarat inquisition, these are not things that can be justified, but an attempt to put things in perspective. As a nation, we have not learnt anything since 1984 [taken as a watershed because it was with this year that State machineries really started getting compromised for communal and political settling of scores]. For a Nation that was born to the wails of communal rioting, it is inexcusable that we still lack the wherewithal to stop communal rioting or punish its perpetrators in time.
The media and the civil society need to ask why situations and incidents are still allowed to deny the people their instinctive desire for communal amity. Had the policy-makers realised their failings back in 1984, the Gujarat riots of 2002 would not have achieved the scale it did. Gujarat happened because 1984 remains ignored. 1984 receives only token mentions because the media and the civil society shy away from it because it complicates the simplistic analysis they have developed of what and who are communal in our country. The post-Godhra riots were a result of the powers-that-be subverting the power to serve to become power that colludes in pushing political agendas. As a people, we continue to pay the price because the people who occupy the public domain do not ask the right questions, do not address the malfunction in the system. Yes the country and its people need to rededicate themselves to the idea of India, an India that was imagined to be secular but today actively segregates its people; an India that was to have public servants but they mutated into subservient attendants to politicians; an India that was to be run by people’s representative has been usurped by autocrats; an India which started democratic but is now foisting dynasties. The nation needs to resolve a lot of ironies to rediscover the idea that it was imagined as. History needs to be remembered and understood so that we are not condemned to repeat past mistakes. The shame need to accepted because then we can move past them. Once that happens, leaders who survive and remain relevant by keeping past nightmares and imagined horrors alive in public minds will have to make way for representative who keep people first.
The nation observed Sankalp Diwas on Thursday; a day when officials at official functions make officious resolutions towards national integration. India is an integrated nation in that it has only grown in size since Independence, not disintegrated, but regions still remain fractured, the people still segregated; so yes, the people could use integration. For that process to resume, people need to demand that events of the year 1984 which followed the day we now observe as Sankalp Diwas are never repeated. That is a wish that every Indian [and when we say Indian we mean the people, not its leaders who live by misplaced priorities and have no qualms about dredging up selective recollections of 1984] harboured in 1984, and yet, twenty years on, the wish remains unachieved. Politics and its mechanizations still manage to cleave the country, set the ground for every spark to become a conflagration, push integration further away. Such players find willing allies in the media which routinely loses focus, pushes tokenism and celebrates sensationalism and offer simplistic solutions. The Gujarat Riots, an undefensible scar on the country’s secular claims, hogs the media space [with or without sting operations] with demands for the head of the government and punishment for the perpetrators. All are valid demands and should be delivered, but can it be expected in a country where a worse pogrom of two decades earlier remains not only largely unpunished, but also largely ignored. This is not an attempt to excuse the sluggishnes that inflicts the Gujarat inquisition, these are not things that can be justified, but an attempt to put things in perspective. As a nation, we have not learnt anything since 1984 [taken as a watershed because it was with this year that State machineries really started getting compromised for communal and political settling of scores]. For a Nation that was born to the wails of communal rioting, it is inexcusable that we still lack the wherewithal to stop communal rioting or punish its perpetrators in time.
The media and the civil society need to ask why situations and incidents are still allowed to deny the people their instinctive desire for communal amity. Had the policy-makers realised their failings back in 1984, the Gujarat riots of 2002 would not have achieved the scale it did. Gujarat happened because 1984 remains ignored. 1984 receives only token mentions because the media and the civil society shy away from it because it complicates the simplistic analysis they have developed of what and who are communal in our country. The post-Godhra riots were a result of the powers-that-be subverting the power to serve to become power that colludes in pushing political agendas. As a people, we continue to pay the price because the people who occupy the public domain do not ask the right questions, do not address the malfunction in the system. Yes the country and its people need to rededicate themselves to the idea of India, an India that was imagined to be secular but today actively segregates its people; an India that was to have public servants but they mutated into subservient attendants to politicians; an India that was to be run by people’s representative has been usurped by autocrats; an India which started democratic but is now foisting dynasties. The nation needs to resolve a lot of ironies to rediscover the idea that it was imagined as. History needs to be remembered and understood so that we are not condemned to repeat past mistakes. The shame need to accepted because then we can move past them. Once that happens, leaders who survive and remain relevant by keeping past nightmares and imagined horrors alive in public minds will have to make way for representative who keep people first.
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