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What’s wrong with us? The question is bound to disturb any right thinking person in the present scenario. You open the newspaper or click on the 24x7 news channel and you can’t help getting appalled by the inhumanity, the brutality, and the intolerance that mar our public life today. Yes, intolerance. At the drop of hat we attack someone for protesting against something that’s not upto someone’s liking or exhibiting a painting which is supposed to be against our ‘culture’. Culture? Is it Indian culture to thrash anyone who doesn’t fall in line on some issue or the other. Yes, like Amartya Sen says, we are “argumentative” but that argumentativeness connotes discussions, expressing individual point of view and show a healthy disregard for falling into line at someone’s diktat. But that kind tolerance for other’s point of view is on the wane in every sphere of life today.
The frightening thing is that people, out of frustration, lack of faith in the law-keepers, and perhaps the whole the ‘system’, have also started to take the law into their own hands. The horrific scene of a petty criminal dragged by a motor cycle borne policeman while all the time being kicked and maimed by a mob will remain in memory for a long time.
But that is the lawless Bihar countryside, you’d say. Really? What about the lawlessness in the urban jungle of India, arguably a sunshine country in the global economic forum? The balance scale seems to be erratically eschewed- on one side an emerging world-class young educated class, and on the other, violence and uncouthness at every level. Take Kolkata, for example, whose citizenry liked to proclaim it as the ‘cultural capital’ of India. Chivalrous young men get beaten up by goons for protesting against eve-teasing, a phenomenon which was not observed before unlike in places like capital Delhi; people get pushed off from running buses, young school girls and a blind man included, but the janata , the bhodraloks sit mutely witnessing it all, avoiding to get involved in the jhamela. Where’s the famous Kolkata chivalry gone? Streets are ruled by killer buses flouting the law because powerful trade unions and even political leaders back them up; illegal auto rickshaws ply and then laugh if you ask for the metre reading to pay the fare , even in Delhi which used to follow this rule. Only recently a girl was slapped by an autorickshaw driver because she protested against the unseemly delay while he chatted with a crony and she was going to miss a train on way to her class. And an old mother gets murdered and burnt by her ward, allegedly for property. Yes, in Kolkata.
In this new brave world of spanking shopping malls, foreign cars and well-furnished dream homes where children are sent to schools with fees equal to a average man’s salary in the past, are we becoming an uncouth, uncivilised, people? Indian culture? Excuse me!
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