Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/
I am a traveller and a trekker. I have been to different places in the country and across different parts of the world, as a traveller. Each place has filled me with memories and experiences that will last a lifetime. The beauty of the place and the beauty of the people have enriched my life and the way I perceive the world. I have been the recipient of kindness and goodwill from many humans who I recollect and remember fondly for who they were and what they did instead of remembering them as people belonging to a particular religion. Therefore, when I woke up to the news of the tourists being killed in Pahalgam, it saddened and disturbed me on a personal level. Imagine a bunch of people who were probably in their most relaxed state of mind enjoying their time with their families, friends and sharing the experience with their families back home by posting pictures, sharing videos being suddenly charged at, attacked, terrorised and in pain. Imagine them thinking we should not have probably come out of our city at all, wishing this trip had never happened and yet praying for some miracle that would make these terrorists spare them. But alas, for those twenty…unfortunate souls, that was to be the end of their journey in this world and as far their families are concerned, this will remain a trauma and a grief forever. Those who witnessed their family members being shot down are likely to live with PTSD disorders, nightmares, grief, anger and bitterness even. Some may go into therapy, some may continue living with it and some may go on to hate those coming from the same background as the terrorists were from.
Social media posts are flooded with people demanding blood for blood, asking people to unite in the name of religion. Yet I remain distant from these slogans. From these calls. They are emotional reactions devoid of any rationale. Maybe even planted in the social media with ulterior motives. Yes, the terrorists wanted to kill people from a certain community. So what are these people who ask us to unite, expecting us to do? Unite and then what? Ostracize those amongst us who belong to the same community as those terrorists did? Discriminate against them? Deny them employment? Deny them economic growth? Boycott the businesses run by them? All because a bunch of them somewhere far removed from our values refused to be human. So that we create more sense of the divide amongst the people who we call neighbours, friends, acquaintances, helpers, in the name of the religion? So that all of this discrimination becomes a source for the recruiters of terrorist activities to use as an excuse to add more terrorists into their fold giving them examples of how people from their religion are treated as second class citizens and discriminated against and denied opportunity?
The root cause of terrorism comes from deprivation or a sense of deprivation. It comes from exclusion or the feeling of being left out. While yes, the terrorist leaders may profess supremacy of their belief and lure many young and impressionable minds into their fold, what actually lures the largest groups to join these factions are abject poverty, unemployment, depravity or their own personal experiences of loss.
Yes, terrorism has no religion. We are all divided and united by our experiences. A person coming to Bengaluru and demanding the autorickshaw drivers to speak in Hindi evokes a collective response of protest and anger from the locally based Kannada speaking crowd. What is happening here is that the Hindi speaking person feels exclusion and the Kannada speaking crowd experiences a sense of threat, injustice and a direct challenge to their existence and sustenance. It is less about language and more about human emotions associated with our existence and our sense of being. The person from Dalit community not being allowed into the places which is reserved for those from a higher caste again evokes different emotions.
I saw a post about how the Hindus need to unite and not be divided on the basis of castes and language. But how? Are the so-called upper class people going to welcome all of the Scheduled Castes acquaintances of theirs into their houses and share their plates and utensils? Are they going to invite them to the sacred places reserved for their own kind? Are we going to stop referring to people in a condescending manner as those Bengalis, those Malayalis, those Hindiwalas or those Madrassis? Are we going to stop using our caste identification as our second names so people know what we are and treat us accordingly? Are we going to stop acting like we have some extra horns so please treat us like we were blessings of our esteemed gods for you?
I am a Hindu. I follow and practice Hinduism as a way of life. It is with this audacity that I am stating to all those who ask us to unite as Hindus that I am willing to do so. First you prove that being Hindu means the same to everyone. Being Hindu means all of us are treated equally. Being Hindu means every single one of us identifying as Hindus can step into the sanctum sanctorum of a temple without any reservations. Being Hindu means it doesn’t matter what language we speak, you think of me as your own. As long as that does not happen you and I are not the same. It is the same with every religion. Within every religion, there are believers, liberals and non-believers. Within every religion lies a bunch of people who are fanatics. Fanaticism is dangerous in all its forms. Kashmir is a conflict prone area due to its long history of conflict. There are layers and layers of history behind its conflict that cannot be unravelled just by pointing fingers at a particular group of people. The government should take stringent measures to crack down and curtail terrorism in these areas, whether that amounts to strengthening our borders further or cracking down on the local support provided to these terrorists and bringing them to justice. People uniting in the name of religion is not a solution and at the most it can only be a temporary distraction. What we need is constant and consistent action against terrorism and not to take anything for granted in a highly sensitive territory like J&K.
And most of us who share these posts are conveniently going to forget them tomorrow when something far more interesting pops up on our feeds. But are we feeling the pain? Maybe not to the extent we should. Maybe we are losing our humanity one incident at a time.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.