By Robert Clements
Tiger Statistics and Shooting Messengers..!
A few years ago, a news item appearing in Indian newspapers mentioned that people had found out that blankets offered by the Indian Railways to its passengers for their overnight journeys were washed only once in two months! Which meant, realized horrified passengers that they had slept in the sweat and dirt of sixty other passengers, before the blankets went for their bi-monthly cleaning!
How did the railways react? Did the minister in charge or the general managers put their heads down in shame? No, they didn’t! They decided to punish the people for refusing to sleep in those filthy blankets. “No more blankets!” They cried in unison, and decided to stop offering blankets to passengers.
Many years ago, I wrote a play about a man caught in a lift. Different people came up to the shut doors and offered different pieces of advice to the poor man inside. Some told him not to panic, some made him sing religious songs, some even told him to breathe slowly so as to not use up all the air in the lift. Suddenly everybody was quiet and the man inside, realized somebody important had come. “Sir, I am stuck inside!” he shouted, “Help me!”
A minister had arrived. He looked around, saw he had an audience and declared, “From today all lifts are banned!”
Instead of finding solutions to let the man out, to see that lifts don’t stop midway, the lift was banned and people trudged wearily up staircases, as much as they had to spend cold nights on trains, because the railways were caught with unwashed blankets!
In the last few years, banning has become a popular pastime in our country.
Is this how we address problems? By punishing the people?
Which brings me to this very queasy question, why was the internet, which finally revealed the depth of horror happening in Manipur banned? And why after the horror of the rapes was revealed did the government say it was going to take action against Twitter for showing the atrocities committed? Isn’t it just like banning the blanket and the lift? And the same happens everywhere; instead of taking the blame for a rape or assault on a woman we blame it on clothes women wear, or that she was out too late. So, we ban women from dressing the way they like, instead of making our villages, towns and cities safer.
Blame the police for not policing better and get the top man transferred or sacked as soon as such a crime is committed. Let’s stop shooting the messenger.
“Help!” cries the man in the lift, his voice becoming weaker. “Help!” cry the people of Manipur, their voices getting weaker as internet lines are shut down sporadically, and those asking for peace and government intervention are jailed!
Either, we are not allowed to communicate about atrocities or made to concentrate on trivial items so that our attention is not onto important things happening around us: Like people were made to concentrate on tigers instead of human beings last Sunday: Front page headlines of a leading national English daily on Sunday carried news that the tiger population had increased by five hundred tigers!
Not in the fourth or fifth page, but headlines on the front page at the same time as the more important news of twenty- one of our country’s elected representatives going on a fact finding mission to see for themselves the atrocities, murders, rapes and dastardly happenings in the Indian state of Manipur was placed elsewhere in the newspaper!
That is how callous we have become: The increase of a tiger population takes precedence over massive human right violations and sickening atrocities on Indian women!
As I study the failings of the press during the Nazi regime, I find that even as major atrocities were committed by the state the press either remained silent or toed the official line. The press like the judiciary should have the courage to be strong pillars of democracy and not makeshift bamboo bridges, being swept away by a dangerous current below.
But doesn’t this also reflect the callousness of the reader?
Have we become apathetic to what is happening around? Have we become so selfishly lost in a world of cell phone messages, and WhatsApp savouries that we have forgotten how to think and feel anything beyond? It most certainly must be if we continued reading the article beneath those headlines, instead of asking, “What about that fact- finding mission?”
What have they found out about Manipur? They are our MPs! Elected by our own people, who have decided to throw away official reports and find out for themselves what is happening in that far off state!
But the ‘tiger report’ was like a lollypop given to us to suck, so our minds would move away from the more important news!
“Grrrr!” growl 3682 tigers with delight, “We made headlines today! More people are losing their lives in that state, than all the humans we attacked and ate, yet we made front page!”
Jim Corbett whose tales of man-eaters filled my youth would have been delighted!
Or maybe, just maybe, he would have taken his ancient rifle and standing astride the park named after him have warned the nation, “When news of a tiger population increasing takes precedence over killings of your citizens, then you need to seriously look into your hearts!”
Yes, we certainly need to look into ourselves! A country, whose people have been known for their compassion and gentleness, that we taught the whole world how to get freedom through non-violence now needs to look deep into ourselves to check whether our senses have been numbed, our feelings anaesthetized, and our ability to react, paralyzed!
Did you read those headlines without reacting? Or, are you also joining and shooting the messenger?
(The Author conducts an Online Writers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883).