Greta Thunberg, teenage climate activist and Time’s person of the year, was recently asked to “chill” by US President Donald Trump as he joined the bandwagon of Brazilian and Russian Presidents who had asked Greta to focus on something else.
The Australia’s President also commented that he cannot lay off thousands of jobs of coal miners. There must be some other way to stop fires in the Australian forests than Greta boiling her blood and “not chilling” because she is not a stereotyped teenager who would “go to watch an old-fashioned movie”.
The west is not the only cold region. The chill has in its clasp a large part of the country as New Delhi and several northern Indian cities snuggle deeper into the ‘razai’.
The chill was already there in the blood of the mutinous citizens who took to streets to warm themselves by burning buses, cars and bikes. The protests did not subside even after they showered policemen with rocky missiles, who merely wanted to stop them from burning assets purchased with the taxpayers’ money. A video showed a policeman lying on the road and the public hurling stones at him. A chill must have gone down his spine.
An IPS officer, D Roopa, took to Twitter, “They covered their faces to hide their identity, changed direction of CCTVs by trespassing into someone else’s property, brought hundreds of stones in bags, pelted and damaged public property and attacked law enforcing authorities/police. If this is not criminal conspiracy, then what is?”
She is right. Reason or no reason, vandalising someone else’s property cannot be justified.
The protestors failed to explain what exactly they are protesting against. People on national television kept saying that they are fighting against inequality and for their rights, but have not explained exactly what in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) caused them to remove the rails from the railway tracks.
If they had known, they could have found better ways to protest as no law can be imposed on anyone. A protestor in Bihar said he is fighting against inflation, didn’t know what is CAA or NRC.
It was equally cold of the public to wreak havoc on the streets and burn down the harmony.
PM Modi has decided to host conferences where his party members will explain what exactly the rationale behind CAA is – something that the home minister could not explain in Parliament.
Had the PM dug the well before the fire, the properties of tax payers would not have been reduced to ashes and those 18 people would have been alive.
There is another riddle called the NPR (National Population Register) which is converting murmurs into a rumble and, it appears, there are more myths about it than about the solar eclipse. Some are asking why the government does not strengthen Aadhaar as it already has our digital biometric details.
If our retina scan and finger prints do not make our identity, a KYC form can be updated with the mandatory additional information. And, if Aadhaar is not “that” important, why did they bring it in the first place? But, it seems, confusing the nation is their birthright.
Now, saying that “we” are not responsible for what “they” have done: it is so cold of the government to play the blame game and not make allowance for “us”, the people.
Moreover, if a teacher asks a student to get an I-card, what is shameful in that? If the teacher asks the student to make a green I-card for Muslims and an orange one for the Hindus, and sit in separate classrooms, then the students have the right to protest against the bias.
But, the so-called leaders of our country do not hesitate in commenting: “Muslims have 150 countries to go to, Hindus have only India.” Which country denies Hindus the right to migrate? Asking a family to pack up and find somewhere else to live, how cold one can be?
Arundhati Roy, a prize-winning author, crossed all lines and caused shivers. She said when someone asks you about your details, mislead the person by telling him that your name is Ranga Billa and you reside at 7, Race Course Road.
Are they the characters of her new book? Is she trying to turn people into liars, or she is saying that the government is reposing some trust in you, don’t let them do that?
The surname culture is also vicious. When someone asks someone’s name, they don’t want to address them by that name, but want to know much more beyond that. So, they ask for the surname. Hence begins the love-hate relationship with that person.
Region, religion, language, culture, lineage, attire, food habits, ancestral business – everything is revealed by a person’s surname. It also reveals whether the other person is likeable or not. Aren’t we cold when we do not look at the person’s traits but judge him on the basis of what name his forefathers chose thousands of years back?
There was a spark of compassion in a policeman in Karnataka who began singing Jana-Gana-Mana and announced that one who doesn’t sing with him is the offender.
People around him stood in attention for 52 seconds and the magic of patriotism took over. Another streak of compassionate surfaced when seven Muslims in Gujarat came to the rescue of policemen.
It would be warm if a woman feels safe with strangers, if a middle-class man knows that the tax he is paying would benefit him, if a student knows he will have a job once he is out of college and a grandfather can take a stroll in his porch without worrying about being deported because he has lived for only a few generations in this country.
—The writer is an educationist. Views are personal.
