“ All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our
civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official
gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid and all without imagination or
heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that anyone of them should
suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride.”
Bertrand Russell.
Every person who
is not an exalted nationalist (like the folks of the BJP, ABVP
and the Sangh) would wish that he or she had a daughter like Gurmehar Kaur, the
conscientious and brave young lady. I hope that my own girl has the courage to
stand upright and speak conscientiously as Gurmehar Kaur. I think
one must use ‘audacity’ in lieu of the word ‘courage’ if you must, so as to
throw more punch into that wonderful trait.
But it requires a different sort of
mental makeup, deep moral bankruptcy and arrogance to call Gurmehar’s brave
polemic, anti national and attack her on the social media like mad swarm
of wasps brandishing and using their uniquely nationalistic (sic) vitriolic as
the ABVP members and Sanghis did.
What did they do?
They trolled her and posted invective that tell us how morally
depraved, blind, sick, petty, unjust, bloodthirsty, licentious, rapists,
misogynistic, racist, genocidal, filicidal, sadistic and feral uncouth they
are. The wider and glaringly ominous matter is that the trolls were mostly all
by folks in their youth. That tell us that the future of the country is
precariously on the verge of doom; so is the place and status of women in the
society. Imagine that a few years from now we may have such depraved minds
lording over us. Oh well, they already are!
Threat of rape and incessant abuse
forced Gurmehar Kaur to back off. She asked to be left alone. It is a sad
reflection of the times we live in, that a young woman is not allowed to
express herself. We call this a free country! That these rowdy elements and
barbarians had to take recourse to threats of rape, violence and abuse tells us
the fact that the premise of their outrage and anger is baseless and they
cannot argue for their beliefs with clarity, logic, truth and substance.“
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off
with his head !’ she said , without even looking round.” Lewis Carol,
Alice in Wonderland.
Indeed it was the war that killed her
father and not Pakistan; indeed it was not a Hindu that gored out the foetus
from the womb of a Muslim woman in the cleansing programme in Gujarat, it was
the indoctrination of religious hatred; it is not Muslim men who kill hundreds
in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan every other day detonating suicide
vests strapped on them, but it is the vile religious hatred which they
succumbed for. More often than not is it not the thought process that leads a
person to commit a crime that must be seen as culpable, than the person who
commits the crime physically?
Gulmehar Kaur has in her young mind
wisdom, that perhaps we heard before from renowned thinkers like Bertrand
Russell .“ Of all evils of war the greatest is purely the
spiritual: the hatred, then injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial
conflict.”
I wonder if these men or their handlers
in power would ever be able to logically, intellectually and with civility
repudiate each of the arguments Gurmehar Kaur made and earnestly used in favour
of her plea for peace and cessation of hostilities with Pakistan. No they
won’t. They can’t. For just as the military establishment in Pakistan wants
perpetual simmering hostility with India, the BJP needs the Pakistan bogey to
stay in power when all the sophistry, loot and lies come to light and
people get restless.
But until then we need to be in awe of
this young lady whose wisdom and courage, we can only hope pollinates
many such young minds.