Wednesday, November 05, 2008

What's wrong with Indian society: Innocent get killed, Vandals get respect


Innocents are shot dead without a thought while goons under the garb of politicians can slaughter the soul of the nation but are spared. This is a sad reality in today's India.

The Indian police that never takes any action against a person who is remotely a 'VIP', kills a 22-year-old Kuldeep Kumar without any provocation. The incident occurred in Bhiwani in Haryana. They later said that it was an accident. The trigger got accidentally pushed. Kyaa saadgi hai!

This is the problem with this nation. The Indian Police are still governed by the same Police Act which the British had formulated in 1861 to rule over the natives. The act that treated Indians as subjects and where police were not for the security of the colonial natives but the 'White Masters'

Today the White Master is replaced by the VIP. This VIP is a strange term in a democratic nation. In India, a VIP is one, who is either a politician, a filthy rich businessman, a filmstar, a crackpot or anybody from comedian Raju Srivastava to Rakhi Sawant.

This list includes everyone who has either got a few billions or is visible on TV. He has the right to mibehave with the rest of 'mere mortals'. He can be a Govinda, he can be a Bihar minister who slaps a airline manager and he can be a 'politician' like Raj Thackeray who can let loose his cadre on tens of thousands of people.

But never, the cane of police will never even touch Raj or his goons. Of course, the Bhiwani boy whose marriage was scheduled a month from now, probably deserved a bullet because he was not a VIP or VVIP. He was brutally shot dead and the shameless cops said that they mistook him for a criminal. They never make a mistake in case of any VIP even with a cane. Do they?

We have to blame ourselves for this situation. Haven't we given the police and politicians this right? We fight over religion, caste and all such things that eventually end up ceding our rights and getting civil liberties curbed. We, of course, never speak up for justice and liberty.

Rahul Raj was killed just a few days back for 'hijacking' a bus. Bihar feels he was murdered, Maharashtra feels a terrorist was done to death. Rest are also divided on the basis of their 'other affiliations'. [Any affiliationf or law!] Society supports the encounters just like they happen in movies and feels that's the ideal way without realising its danger for the civic society.

Of course, when unrestrained police gets corrupted and politicised to such levels that a common man gets thrown in lockup for a brawl for weeks while a VIP is allowed to go scot-free even after getting people killed and goes out on 'bail' and we still don't speak up, can there still be hope?

Aren't we a selfish and hypocritical to the core. Kuldeep's death is just one example. It happened close to Delhi and it became a news. Hundreds of such stories unfold in rural India everyday. But for most of us, there is no sense of outrage, as perhaps, the person is always 'the other'.

There are Muslims speaking for Muslim suspects and there are Hindutva organisations speaking for the ones like terror suspect Sadhvi Pragya. But innocent and ordinary citizens have none speaking for them. Who will speak for them, who are nothing, just ordinary Indians?