Captured - not caged
You can bodily restrict a person
but can you capture ideals or idealism? This is the question that flashed in my
mind on reading about a southern commander of the Maoists captured with his
wife and friends from just across the border from the very state he belongs to.
This flash gathered speed when I listened
to Amy the eldest daughter of the couple now 17 and in junior college who has
fiercely decided to follow in her parents’ footsteps. It won’t be long before
the younger one will follow suit. However what is astonishing is the singled
minded determination in the child justifying her parents’ role as liberators of
future generations and toeing their idealism as genuine and true and certainly
achievable. Though she may camouflage idealism by pronouncing the lure to make
this world a better place and secure a better future for coming generations,
one cannot miss the sure footed way she has wilfully moulded herself
irrespective of the consequences which are ever too blatant to miss.
I stopped to wonder what the
government of the day could do to include such thoughts into the mainstream.
Why do young people talk idealism even when on an empty stomach? How does one
wean away such hopefuls and deter them from taking up such extreme views? My
mind turns to the Naxalite movement of the 70’s in Bengal. I was quite young
when I discovered that one of my neighbours has been shot dead by the police.
They brought his body home and the last rites were performed.
I was too young to comprehend the
extent of jingoism or dare devil attitude in their causes. I was too young to
argue for or against them and their cause, for to a ten year old a neighbour
was dead and he was shot by the police who equated him to being a thief or a
criminal. In the annals of a young mind the neighbour was an evil man that is
why the state had to punish him for his deeds.
A lot of water has since flown
under the Howrah Bridge and the state has seen other upheavals. It has also
seen the demise of the naxal movement in Bengal though elsewhere new recruits
were attracted to its fold. Now Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand seem to be
the pall bearers of this ideology that has forced the government to tackle it
with renewed vigour. The army refuses to
fight them citing the fact that they cannot fight their own citizens.
Yes that is the problem. How do
we fight this menace? How do we put an end to this loss of life on both sides?
The Naxalite movement and its ideological fathers will have to understand that
they are fighting a lost cause. They are trying to jump over their shadows,
spinning around in circles like a dog seeking happiness in its tail. They have
to understand that the path of nonviolence can also achieve the same results that
which they seek to draw through violence. They need to understand that no
matter how much they seek their ideologies it will always follow them like the
tail of a dog.
It would be better to participate
in main stream politics and help build this nation on the path and ideologies
that can be diluted with modern thinking and better cushioned to appeal to the
majority. It would certainly be better to follow the law of the land and still
be able to build a castle of their idealism which can exist side by side with
other viewpoints. It would be better to grasp the finer elements of others and
help co habitat with their core fundamentals evolving a better idea of a modern
India, a Nation that can withstand the erosions
of time.
For that matter it would be
advisable to whisper sweet sanely advise into the ears of the first born of Rupesh
and Shyla so that they can eke out their existence ideologically even while
following the law of the land and abiding to the laws laid down by society, a
society which nurtured their grandparents and foregathers and who still believe
in co-existing rather than annihilating the ones who serve a different view
point. When this happens you can free the caged mind set of Rupesh, his wife
and daughter and they will no more remain captives of the state.
9th May 2015
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