Sometime in the first week of August as we woke up to the smiles of our close ones, to the breath of fresh air, to the morning tea, people in Bihar and Assam woke up to what is now being called as the worst flood to have hit the region in last 25 years. They woke up to chaos, to rising water, to their homes being taken away by gushing rivers, to bridges getting collapsed, to families that were displaced. As it stands now, it is said that nearly 600 people have lost their lives and nearly 2 crore people affected by nature’s fury or is it? Let’s not even start about that!!
There was something similar or perhaps just a glimpse of what happened in Bihar and Assam that happened in Mumbai. And rightly so, people reacted to this with a spirit which is so special to Mumbai. And the flow of emotions followed, reactions followed, tweets followed, media coverage, “marked safe” posts followed. Humanity was seen to have overpowered all the rhetoric of religion, caste, ideology.
But what was surprising in all these events was that the same outpour of humanity wasn’t seen for the people of Bihar or Assam. There was no such flow of emotions for the innocent people who were dying, no reactions to them losing their homes, no tweets to the mammoth of a disaster, no media coverage to this biggest humanitarian crisis to have hit that region in the past 25 years.
I am enraged!! Not with the government which is busy with providing ambulance to dying cows and constructing statues which cost 1OOO’s of crores and playing ‘Game of thrones’ to capture the Iron throne and busy plotting their next agenda. Which is busy thumping their success by renaming policies. Which is busy doing nothing other than spreading hate.
I am enraged!!! Not with the media who, like Sagarika Ghosh rightly pointed out, is no longer corporate but has become ideological; which is busy issuing certificates of nationalism to people, setting TV screens on fire and pitting people against one another, and trying to know which oil Yogiji applies on his head instead of being worried about how innocent children who died in his own constituency.
I am enraged!!!! With the society, its people, its so called nationalists, liberals, religious heads. I am enraged at the selective outcry on human crisis, death, genocide. I am enraged at this desensitized society that no longer values human blood, human life.
I reject to be a part of this society which has lost its conscience. Which has become so racist that human life is valued only if it is of a particular community, colour, country. In this month of Islamic calendar (known as zil-hijj), I am forced to believe that we have not only sacrificed in the name of God but we have been forced to sacrifice our conscience. To me that is the death of humanity.
