Killing (in) the Heart of India

Rajesh Kumar Sharma

The seventy six men who were killed in Dantewada are the kind of people for whom, ironically, such violence is carried out and explained away. Ordinary Indian people who needed honest work, and who found it in the paramilitary forces. They could have been, in a different situation, on the other side of the see-saw of violence!

When ideas and opinions screen the faces -and bodies- of living human beings, a cycle of bloody violence is waiting to be let loose. Whether you speak of the "savage nature" of some people or of the state, there is a risk that the real living people, each with a family and friends, will be erased from consciousness. You will take aim not at a person but at an idea.

Ideas do not die, because they do not have a life.

Real, living people die.

Buddha and Gandhi are needed today to hold our finger and show to us the faces of people who live and die. And who deserve to live longer -and to die natural human deaths.

In democratic civilizations there is no space for battlegrounds. Only for playgrounds -for contests of ideas.

Of ideas that would not bury real faces, that would not substitute life.

Comments

Sudhir Gandotra said…
Well said Rajesh. If people were to learn just this, life on the planet would change.
Where will Buddha and Gandhi come from ? Their ideas are with us and we need to find a way to have these ideas comprehended.
Alas, the education is lost and we are stuck !
April 8, 2010 at 8:44 AM
Nandini.C.sen said…
I am shaken to the core at the enormity of this mindless violence. But the thought of the Government resorting to air power chills me to the bones. God alone knows how many innocent lives wil be snuffed out this time. I would appeal to all the intellectuals - the Maoist sympathisers, anybody - please get the dialogues to start. From the Naxalbari Movement of the 70s to this - how we have fallen. I can only hang my head in shame. we are a failed state.
April 8, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Unknown said…
The faceless and voiceless people have always been meeting(and it is a disgrace) the same cruel fate. Innocent lives always become victims of the clash of ideas and opinions.
April 8, 2010 at 1:21 PM
Badri Raina said…
most excellent;
do await my latest on this; tomorrow maybe.
April 9, 2010 at 6:12 AM
Navdeep said…
true ! I just wonder what the Govt is doing after all
April 11, 2010 at 3:19 PM
Sudhir Gandotra said…
The Goverment (supposed to be of the people of India), bought over by the MNCs, is working closely to ensure the interests of the MNCs, is working almost to bring alive the science fiction movie AVATAR in these areas.

People musr arise, before it is too late - before the new East India Company has rooted itself on our heard and lives, enslaving all of us.
April 12, 2010 at 6:28 AM
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