Today is the day I’m proud to say that I couldn’t care less about Dalits, SCs, STs or India as a country for that matter. I don’t give a flying damn if a few (or many) youths think the constitution isn’t strong enough to protect them or the fact that India has won 66 gold medals or the rising prices of petrol. I don’t care that someone named Deepika Padukone wants to become a producer or whether some Radhika Apte is going to star in a Hollywood flick. Facebook evil incorporated can steal all my data and give it to ISIS for all I care. Today I am numb or at least I want to be, just like The GreenDay writes in a song “Tell me that I won’t feel a thing so give me Novacaine”.
All that has happened in our country or in the world is insignificant, trivial and negligible in the face of what has happened in the past couple of days. It is with a heavy heart I say that I read about the recent rape cases in the newspapers and I cringed, I closed my eyes and I sighed like I did every time I read such news which is shamefully common in our country. This time it was an eight-year-old girl. I want you to take time and register the cruelty of this monstrous rape, register it so deep that you skip a breath everytime you hear of it and then ask yourself whether you’d like for such a barbaric society to exist; let alone be a part of it. If this doesn’t move you then take another moment and factor in the fact that there are people who are willing to rally to support the accused and label the victim as a “threat”. Let that sink in.
The insensitivity and the emotional ineptness of our political leaders and media had ceased to amaze me up until this point. I was hit with heart-wrenching sorrow when I saw OUR political leaders, the very people we cast a vote for to represent our society have the audacity to turn this gruesome act into a political one, which still would have been digestible considering the misfortune of our politics but to make it a communal Hindu-Muslim issue is way below the belt even by our standards, yet we are secular country. We live in a sick society, a sick and deranged society where men think they should rape an eight-year-old girl to teach her community a lesson — a society where the very police we entrust our protection with would be a party in it. No matter how much we lie to ourselves and shield ourselves from this, but the reality remains intact, we all belong to the same society. We share our law, our constitution and our nationality with the same people who committed the crime and the people who supported them.
So today I’m not proud to be an Indian, today I’m ashamed, today I’m stricken with grief and sorrow. There is nothing unpatriotic about feeling ashamed of one’s own country and its actions. Don’t let the constant blabber of our politicians and media undermine the cruelty of what has happened, don’t brush it off as just another incident because it isn’t. There are very few events that have the capacity to change the course of nations and we may very well be on the brink of witnessing one. This time it isn’t about freedom from colonial rule or about race or nationality for that matter, this time it is about humanity. It does not and should not matter what caste, colour or country the victim or the accused belong to but what should is that a shameful and horrible act has been committed and we are insensitive enough to even discuss what religion has to do with it.
We are still a developing nation and there is nothing wrong with aspiring to be a great nation but first before we start building bullet-trains or smart cities before we start protesting about reservations and who should get them; we should aspire to become a decent country first. A country where our women and girls are safe from the vicious predators and religious bigots. A country where we are sensitive and compassionate towards each other. A country where all get equality and justice no matter our religion caste or nationality, then maybe we can aspire to be a great country we once were. All said and done repeat after me with clenched fists swinging in the air “Bharat Maata ki Jay” until we lose its meaning and oh I forgot! It is Bharat Maata, mother, woman; too bad we can’t rape her; or can we?
Just saying 