One India, with love.

Can hatred be controlled by law and order alone?

When there is hatred and prejudice in your heart, all it takes is a little trigger to bring it out to the fore. I speak in the context of the present ‘lynchings’, which a section of our society is happy to blame on the present government dispensation.

We refuse to see that the same instigators could not have provoked You or Me to kill. We fail to see that only those get instigated who carry prejudice and dislike in their hearts. So rather than blaming the Government, the instigators, and the criminals who staged these crimes, we must focus on finding out why there is still so much prejudice in our society.

In a Democracy, it is a given, that there will be different and new political powers. An Obama can be replaced by a Trump, a Churchill can be replaced by an Atlee, a Manmohan Singh can be replaced by a Modi. For every voting constituency of an Obama, there is a voter constituency for a Trump. Accepting a Democracy by itself means the acceptance of this diversity of voters and value systems. It also means the acceptance that time and voter will change everything in a few years . Therefore those who blame the present government for all the hatred should be smart enough to understand that this government will also go one day just as the previous government did. ( Luckily, India does not have the  dictatorial China communist party).

So, blaming everything on the NDA is na?ve, if not downright dumb. If we as a society wish to do away with hatred, we must work at the ground level, not at the policy level. ( Because policies will keep changing in a democracy).

The counter to hatred and prejudice is love and respect. Those of us who wish to see a society based on respect for diversity and love for another human being, will have to counter this hatred with acts of love.

So for every mob of 20 Indians who kill a person, we must have a bunch of 50 Indians who support that person’s family. For every hate crime, we must have an overt expression of love and indulgence. So, if an Ayub Pandith is killed by a lynch mob, we, as a people and society, must come together and shower Ayub’s family with compensation, adoption, admissions ( to schools for the children), job offers for the family members, houses, and whatever possible and thoughtful. We should form bands of volunteers who will help them in their legal cases, in their bureaucratic interaction, in their quest for moving to a new place ( if at all), and in their need for rebuilding their lives. If a Junaid is killed, we should be doing similar things for them.

But we have become a society that expects the “State” to do everything. We protest, expecting the State to do something. We shout, we froth, we show more anger and more hatred, this time for the State and it’s politicians. How can hatred be countered by hatred again?

 ‘State’ is an entity. State can give you money and assurance, or catch the culprits and give you the satisfaction of revenge. But you cannot expect ‘love’ from an entity. Love has to come from people and persons.

Just as it was not the ‘State’ that killed Ayub or Junaid, it cannot be a “State’’ action that can bring back the respect that we must accord to each other. Indians, Indian people, and Indian society has to come together for building the faith, the respect and the love back. We have to work at a personal level to bring the same love and respect back that kept our society together before partition happened.

All those who raise the ‘Not in my name’ placard, and all those who did not, but are anguished by what happened, it’s time to gather our resources and help these families of hate crimes. We must shower them with our support. We must show them that though there are some Indians who hate them, there are more Indians who love them and respect them. And eventually, we must show that the majority prefers to love and live in peace. Come, let’s do it.

Politics, State, Establishments are all here today, gone tomorrow. Love remains forever. An act of love will take care of all the mistakes and horror of politics. Remember Asoka. The horror of his war crimes are overshadowed by his loving care of his kingdom. But he was a king in a monarchy. Now, we are the the people in a democracy. It’s time for us citizens to be that Ashoka and truly honor the Ashok chakra of our flag.

Tanu Mehta

30/6/2017