Roots

One Sunday morning, Mitali and I got talking over a cup of tea. Here in the North-east, if there is something that we enjoy it is our morning cuppa of Assam tea, listening to good music and chatting. That Sunday the talk drifted to the riots and disturbance which is breaking apart this beautiful country of ours. Do we need to discuss the ‘whys’? No I am sure we don’t. There is no doubt in my mind about the cause – POWER. The same power Hitler sought – the power to control people. So we left it at that.

The Mob

The next point of discussion was what can make a san, thinking adult man kill another in cold blood (women and children too). How can you live your life with the burden of someone’s life on your conscience? The only answer we could think of was that it is a mob on rampage and not necessarily an individual. The thought process of a mob need not necessarily be sane or logical. In the heat of the moment a mob can be singularly ‘mad’ while being sane, thoughtful, compassionate when split into individuals. There is no predicting what mobs are capable of; the killing fields of Orissa, the sikh riots of ’84 and a lot of other such event stand testimony to this fact.

My Identity my individuality

So that was that, or was it? In all this we started thinking about our own identity. I had been brought up in a congenial atmosphere where there were no regional or ethnic biases. Right from childhood I had been taught that we are Indians first and foremost, and then Konkanis, Kannadigas, Tamilians and Punjabis. And today, when I think back, I thank KV Kanchanbagh (where I did all my schooling) for teaching me this important and valuable lesson in national integration. We were all part of a whole. Our identity was of an Indian. We were a group of friends to whom religion, caste, home state etc had no consequence. Our enmity (of course I will not deny that we had so called enemys) was entirely based on trivial personal issues and disagreements and religion or ethnicity. As a kid we never asked a new student in our class if he was a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, nor if he was a Tamilian or a Gujju.

As a result of that, today, I am (appearing to be) a minority in my own country. A Konkani born in Mangalore, brought up in Hyderabad, married to a Bihari who grew up all over the country. And I think what that makes Adu? With our moving all around the country as part of my job, wonder if I am forcing Adu into becoming an ‘Indian’. Are we losing our identity as Indians? Or is that the Maharashtrians, the Tamilians, the Kannadigas and the Bengalis of this country are taking over? In that case what will happen to us ‘Indians’?

The problem with us ‘Indians’, and I refer not to the Maharashtrians, the Tamilians, the Kannadigas and the Bengalis but the Indians who also happen to be from Maharashtra or Tamilnadu or Karnataka or Bengal, is that we prefer not to get involved in this ‘jhanjhat’ (for the want of a better word). For if we did and rioted on our own then what would be the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’? This thought process leads to inaction and that in an indirect way encourages ‘them’ to do what they do.

The Solution

What do we do about it? There are lots of ways in which we can contribute. I could think of a few which I have penned and I am sure every one of us will have his or her way of contributing preventing our extinction.
1. Voice your opinion, start speaking out. Gather support and bring more ‘neutral’ people into our fold. I am sure there are more of us out there.
2. Don’t get carried away by people who say that someone else is getting a better deal (a very difficult proposition I agree). It is just a political game plan to split us all up on any and every possible pretence. Do all of us want to end up as just vote banks or do we want to contribute to the electoral process and betterment of our country.
3. Lastly on a humorous note – let’s have Military rule!!