While the Gurugram is still healing from the riots in and around it, I was driven back from office to my home, by my cab driver, who happens to be from the religious minority community. I checked with him whether streets are still reeling with the sense of fear, or the world around us has normalised. We sitting in cozy offices and posh homes are sometimes so disconnected that we end up being largely dependent on Social Media and NEWS platforms, while the people like my cab driver and other helps, face the real world. He mentioned minor cases in and around the city that he got to know, but nothing serious. While our conversations traversed into a long silence, I had a question to myself, for which I didn’t have any answers. So INDIA, I have a question and can you answer it to me ?
What if, while driven back home, I am attacked by a mob of frenzied majoritarians, what should I do ? They would attack our car, and at best we can beg them to please let us go. They still might let me go, credits to majoritarian identity I am born in. But they would attack fiercely on my cab driver, on just being a minority identified through his name, his guise or items he may hold. Who knows they might not trust me as well with my religion and may ask for proofs like displaying an ID Cards, by chanting any religious chant or in the worst case, may be showing my cut/uncut genitals. Well, the probability of me getting saved is much higher than my cab driver though. He would be thrashed, beaten unto death and worse. While the timid in me might think of taking advantage of my majoritarian background and runaway. But the morality in me would not allow me to leave my driver and see him getting killed in front of me, just because of his identity? If I run away, I might stay alive, but trust me, I would never be able to live with myself longer and will be dead from inside. And If I fight, might with might to save my fellow human, I would surely be dead with a proud soul but a bereaved family.
I can choose to run away and seek help through the Police, but would they be able to help me and my fellow Indian ? Firstly, I believe a Police or a Military can fiercely fight Kasab like group of terrorists, because the purpose is to save fellow countrymen and even after several gunfires, they are equipped to kill these few terrorists. But no Police/Military in the world is equipped to take on a frenzied mob in a civil war, because of their large numbers, they being their own countrymen themselves, and most times with similar religious identity as well. Also, even if the Police strictly follow the law of the land, they are scared because the mob always has the tacit support of the majoritarian government. Leaving them aside, I cannot even seek help from fellow bystanders, as they like me would be rather timid and choose to stay blind. Moreover, am I also even capable of providing my cab driver and his family justice, posthumously? Neither I have legal acumen, money or political muscle to take the violent mob to gallows, nor I would take up the vigilante route and end up being another form of revenge mob.
Sadly and unfortunately the mob does not even have a face. They are zombies driven by political powers, fueled by the media, have a body but remain faceless. The sloth-like justice system is also not equipped as per me to punish faceless rioters.
And if any of you even dare to suggest, that avoid being around any minority community, then please go and see a psychiatrist.
Nonetheless, I am out of options here, if that ever happens to me, or to you maybe, we would end up just being a count of people died during a hate crime (thanks to recent normalisation of such acts). While some in media are looking for a final violent solution, I ask you… Can you save me, my fellow Indians and my India ?
Poorna Viraam ! 