End Hostility

Editorial:-
It took the death of a 19 year old from the Northeast to the vicious intolerance of Delhi for the mainstream to sit up and realize the insensitivity with which it engages people from the margins. Apart from the immediate requirement to ensure that the murderers do not escape justice, several measures, not all of them advisable, are being considered to ensure better security for people from the Northeast in Delhi and other cities of the country. Security is always welcome, and should be of priority not only for the people from the Northeast but also the nation’s women, children and those from the underprivileged section of the society who otherwise rarely receive the cushion of the law & order machinery. This aspect of prejudice and ignorance is being extensively addressed and hopefully something meaningful will come out of the exercise and that would be the best homage possible to Nido and others like him who experienced the irritant of ignorance and intolerance turn fatally ugly. And as that process continues, it is also perhaps necessary for people from the margins, like us living in Sikkim and the rest of Northeast to turn the mirror on our own attitudes, vis a vis the mainstream, as well.
A general dismissal, even some slight disdain, for the other is a common human trait. There is only so much empathy or understanding one can expect from people and there is nothing drastically wrong with such attitudes so long as they do not manifest in denials or, as one is now learning about Delhi, vicious physical violence. Much as what has happened in Delhi can never be justified, one needs to also accept that similar, perhaps even more worrying since it was organized and targeted, violence has been targeted on people from the mainland in the Northeast. Barely a week before Nido was attacked in Delhi, six “Hindi-speakers” were killed by extremists in Assam. This slaying did not make it beyond news-reports; no candles were lit for the dead, no processions held and no soul-searching undertaken. Killings cannot, and should not, be compared, but one is speaking of responses here, not suggesting that there has been an over-reaction to Nido’s murder, but wondering why the slaying of six received no societal response at all… As mentioned, as the mainstream works towards becoming more aware and more accommodating, it is also necessary that the margins too worked on what can only be called its own irrational hostility towards the mainstream. In the Northeast, the perpetrators are militant organizations, against the lay citizens who turned monsters in Delhi, and each is a worrying, nightmarish scenario. And where is this hostility born? A part of it is definitely born in the rather widespread feeling of having being victimized and the equally ingrained conviction of being somehow deserving of special treatment and status. Empathy, openness, reconciliation… traits necessary to end intolerance fly out of the window the moment the pursuit of privileges and sense of entitlement enters from the door.
Almost always, the more disturbing societal attributes are perpetuated by poorly informed celebrations of the past and all-consuming pursuits of purity. Let’s accept it, the present is always troublesome, the past rosy and the future uncertain. Being nostalgic is natural, but to dwell too much on it is unhealthy; it blinds the future. To contend that the past was better than the present is to reject the human race’s ability to learn and adapt. If the best things reside in the past, then what contributions have the subsequent generations made? The worst thing a people can do to themselves is stop the clock on the progression of ideas, changes of mindsets, attitudes and approaches. A generation does this and soon the next one starts aspiring backwards while everyone else passes them by. Hostility grows in such insecurities and then it does not matter where one is because once that nadir is reached, everywhere is disturbingly intolerant.