Enough!

Editorial:-
Arsonists, who had thus far only targeted parked vehicles in lonely corners with their demented attempts at “teaching lessons”, have now, emboldened perhaps by the feeble public censure and amateurish police action of their past deeds, have graduated to attempting to torch a home in one of the more densely built-over sections of Gangtok. The Baha’I School road in the capital is packed with buildings and vehicles, a congested jumble with a dead-end road which constricts access for rescue and emergency vehicles. It was into such an already dangerous layout that some reprehensibly vicious hands attempted to set a building on fire. They failed… this time... But they managed to injure and traumatize a family which was caught in their macabre plan and they also managed to terrorise an entire neighbourhood which will now forever be suspicious of every stranger they spot loitering in their area. Gangtok has already been unsettled by the events of the week and now has a new concern in evidence of increasing disregard that people with violence on their minds have for property or life. It is important that people, at the individual and also at the community level, resolve to condemn violence wherever and whenever it occurs. Every time people hesitate from condemning violence straightaway, they end up conveying a suggestion that they somehow condone it. No one deserves it [violence], and people need to be better than succumbing to it. Every time people scoffed at reports of vehicle burning, they encouraged miscreants to expand their list of victims. Every time an act of violence passed without condemnation, the perpetrators were encouraged to push the boundaries. Take the rioting of 16 July for instance [and what happened on Wednesday is different from and needs to be viewed separated from the student protest of the previous two days]. In some ways it is already too late for people and their groups to condemn the madness, but they should still find ways to decry it in the strongest words. Don’t do so and a dangerous precedence will have been set. The rioting this time targeted mostly government vehicles and public property. If a strong enough and collective condemnation is not issued and convincingly conveyed, the next time, more properties [like those of political opponents to begin with] will be brought into the crosshairs and by the third time, such segregations as public and private, political and nonaligned will be lost and everything in the sweep of the violently inclined will get targeted. The rest of the country has already reached this disturbing stage as one sees in the litter of ruins that every clash and riot leaves behind. Sikkim can still salvage the situation if its deafeningly silent civil society stands up and screams, “enough”.