This Time It was Guwahati

The terror rocked India once again. We were feeling damn lucky to have a peaceful Diwali (though fire crackers deafened my ears and more so created a great amount of discomfort for Ananya who's less than a month old). But the cordial atmosphere didn't last long. Yesterday morning the news broke out from the already turbulent North-Eastern parts of the country (Capital of Asaam province of India) telling about a very nasty blow by terrorists masterminding 11 serial blasts of high intensity killing 70 people (official figures) and injuring hundreds of them.

The thunder of the blasts may have been 100 times more deafening than the fire crackers on Diwali, a few days ago. It would have been a halt of life for those who lost their kins. It would have been a disaster of sorts for whom who lost the bread earners of their families. All these innocent souls were on roads not to die. These people die for no reason.

In my last blog, I wrote about the State of the Nation but that was about another sad aspect of the society, which rejects the right to the people who beg on streets. This aspect also reject the right to live but it has a completely different connotation. This is about those handful of people who take the system in their stride and keep the law under their feet. What a sham it is! These incidents of terror and violence make me believe that we don't deserve to be democratic. And if it is a democracy managed by such weak and selfish politicians, it better be replaced with an alternative, which protects the proletariat from being victimized without any reason. I don't want to sound an autocrat but I am forced to believe that a tighter control over the system is a must to cover all the loopholes of this spongy democracy. It's very frustrating to see the innocent people dying. Some of us foolish citizens (just as a gossip) even say "this is the way to curb population control" or "how does it matter if a few hundred die of such attacks, we are a billion odd people." But the phenomenon of death is natural and shall remain so. Such unscrupulous warrants of death should not be the prerogative of people whom we even refuse to accept the part of our society. Aren't we growing completely agnostic towards emotions and human well being? Yes we are! I say this with full conviction and include myself in the growing population of those agnostic and emotionless humans who, despite being made of conscience and emotions, remain grossly ignorant and believe that "What is destined, can't be undone." I shall ask the people of this country, what is destined? What is so bad about us that we can't stay united and step up the movement to curb and eliminate such nasty elements from the society.

It must be sounding very idealistic and you may stump me with sarcasm that its only good as a pep-talk and very difficult to go out and make it possible. Yes! indeed the feeling is not wrong. It's easy to preach than do. But then its also a fact that intelligentsia is not the brigade with its feet on the ground. They are the people who provide the way...Our cruel, senseless politicians have to take the next step to make this happen.

Another most important observation that I have made (Most of you might have made the same observation)is that in India such attacks are only being carried out by the mercenaries who some way or the other are associated with a SEPARATIST MOVEMENT. What is this damn separatist movement. In a nut-shell, the definition shall read: "Those organization or people, who have taken up the cause of separation of that province/area, and do not want to be a part of the federal republic. They want to disassociate themselves from the country, reject to adhere to the sovereignty of this country and want a separate state for themselves. Now, when India was declared independent in 1947, these was a concerted effort under the leadership of Nehru and Sardar Patel to reorganize India and assimilate/force to accept the sovereignty of one nation and leave the notion of any princely state. During that period a lot of actions were taken to crush the uprisings and then after a great deal of effort, the dust started settling. But in case of those independent states also, there were a few who wanted to affiliate themselves with some other nation than India. Like in J&K, the Muslims of the valley (read only valley) affiliate themselves more with Pakistan than India ( Though its my opinion and can't be generalized but its slowly getting established as a truth). Same is true for some of our other provinces including that of the North East. And these are the two most turbulent parts of the nation facing threats of the nature of cross border interferences. There is a great depth in this comment and it should not be taken lightly. This argument, for the heck of it, can be countered by another argument that this is true for J&K, where the influence comes from the across the border but what is the case with the separatists in North East. Not as a learned scholar on North-Eastern affairs but as a very ground-zero person, my observation is that these people affiliate themselves more with the surrounding nations than India. There may be a few aberrations here and there but in bulk they are more inclined to closer territories than India. Thankfully, in favor of India, the rest of the parts like Goa, Andaman, Pudducherry are not raising their eyebrows for a separatist demand.

According to my perception, which may be grossly wrong, there has not been enough effort to make these people feel an integral part of India. Rather, they were discarded to an extent and only when there is a territorial threat to India that our system realizes its diplomatic significance and tries to bind these communities together so that we look as a united nation.

Time is running short I will complete this in the next sitting.