The joke is on us. . .

I still remember talking with a friend, after I watched the hit movie ‘Rang De Basanti’ [starring Aamir Khan] about why I didn’t like the movie. The point of my debate was, in a democracy like Bharat, hurting innocent sitting on peaceful protest and killing them by declaring them terrorist does not happen. We are not living under the British rule, and a democratic government should not and could not pull anything like this. Today I stand corrected, it happens and it happens in world’s largest democracy, India.

When I woke up this morning, the news was already on and the first reaction was shit! How can they do this? Don’t we have any rights? Are we not citizens of a democracy? Is the government not supposed to protect its people? Is the administration not meant for our benefit? While sitting in the living room of my house, I felt helpless, sad and angry; sad that I call this country my own, where a few own everything and they can do anything they want to whoever they want; angry not on the corrupt and the perpetuators of this atrocity, but on ourselves as we can’t do anything about it, on this helplessness. It is we who have given them this power and it is we who keep on giving it to them again and again by our silence and by putting a stamp in name of pseudo-secularism; in name of Gandhi who showed the path of satyagrah. It is horrifying to imagine, that a democratic government can even think of doing acts of such barbarism to the citizens of this country.

Today most of my beliefs and convictions about the government, administration, my freedom, my country were broken. I realized a bitter truth, there is no such thing called independence, not in our country. Since childhood we are being fed this theory that we got independence from the British. Ours is a free and independent country. Where is the freedom? During the British rule, unless you kept quiet and didn’t speak against the rulers you carried on with your daily life. No one bothered you. It’s all still the same; nothing has changed, we are free until we keep quiet and do not speak against the corrupt and the powerful. Unless we see no evil and we don’t talk about the wrong doings the independence is there.

They say his demands are naïve, his method is violent, he himself is corrupt, and he should stick to teaching yoga and should not get into politics. Is asking the government for explanation a crime? Is sitting on hunger strike violence? Is demanding to punish corrupt a con? Is asking for cleaning of the system, teaching politics? If yes, then let us hang him. The government is accountable and answerable to each and every citizen of this country no matter from which platform he or she is speaking. Its not the citizen who is answerable to the government; it is the common man who has put the government in power, not the other way around and the day government forgets this, they looses the moral ground of being at the helm of affairs and that is the day the democracy dies.

But all this comes at a later stage and these are bigger issues to be debated, this is not the question right now! It is simple and straight; what was the need of the government to take such drastic step against common man of this country in the middle of the night? Why the sleeping were subjected to air firing? Why the old, women and children were made to face tear gas and lathi-charge? What was the hurry to end it in couple of hours at those wee hours? Such drastic steps against your own people should be last resort, in the time of great emergency; what was it at midnight?

If this act of cruelty by the government goes unnoticed and unpunished, then the joke is on us; it is we who are being robbed, it is we who are being cheated, it is we who are being conned, it is we who are suffering and still it is we who are being punished. And as we say, TII (this is India) mate, the joke will always be on us.

 

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