Ignorance cultivates hatred. Categories are hated but when these same categories become living breathing people, questions arise in our minds and doubts emerge and you wonder what you hated?
These last few days tragic events in Mumbai have shattered the peace of the whole world community. Terror can strike anywhere and at any time and with an ever increasing sophistication of execution. Why do we feel terror will strike? Is there maybe a feeling in us that we have not eliminated the causes for such events. When a crime is committed we hear about punishment, a severe punishment but we do not hear about locating the cause. So many questions are raised by not just the events taking place in Mumbai but more are raised in handling of these kinds of events especially by the media. You feel sense and intellect is muted and stifled. 24 hour reporting means jumping to conclusions, planting seeds of doubts and scariest of all, spreading hatred. When you watch news as the real life drama unfolds, you have a set of questions in your mind, genuine, real questions and the answers you get form news channels are at a different level altogether. You are thinking about the hostages and how many there are and what are the demands of the perpetrators of these events and in the end you only see tens of army personnel or special forces/commandos storming buildings and bringing out bodies and a death toll that keeps rising. You want to know if there are any people stuck in the room where fires are raging and you only find out much later that three bodies burnt alive in that fire because news channels did not ask these questions. So, you wonder whose questions these news channels are answering? Because the answers are not human answers, they are organizational answers. Questions news channels ask are, is India going to break off the round of talks that it has started with Pakistan or pressurize Pakistan to provide serious answers. As if Pakistan is providing a hideout to terrorists in the President's house! When they bring in 'experts' to provide analysis of the event, these 'experts' bemoan and liken their event to past events in New York and London...as if events closer to home in Islamabad, recently when a 5 star hotel was attacked had no significance. Maybe it didn't, after all it belonged to a category called Pakistani, Muslims, a category unfamiliar to these 'experts'.
Spreading hatred for invisible categories, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, West, Pakistan... These are collective nouns for human beings. Pakistan and India has the capability to trigger a nuclear attack on each other in 3 minutes. Who will die in these attacks? Neil Kumar, a 22 year old MA student of Urdu Literature in Delhi, coming back from his university, buying dahi bada from a theiley walla or maybe Salma Jahan of Lahore, a 13 year old girl with huge crush on Shahrukh Khan, while returning from watching Rub nei Bana dei Jodi in Cinema. Its therefore not about Pakistanis or Indians or about Hindus or Muslims, its not about Jews or Christians, nor about East versus West, its about names, relationships, people, human beings!
These last few days tragic events in Mumbai have shattered the peace of the whole world community. Terror can strike anywhere and at any time and with an ever increasing sophistication of execution. Why do we feel terror will strike? Is there maybe a feeling in us that we have not eliminated the causes for such events. When a crime is committed we hear about punishment, a severe punishment but we do not hear about locating the cause. So many questions are raised by not just the events taking place in Mumbai but more are raised in handling of these kinds of events especially by the media. You feel sense and intellect is muted and stifled. 24 hour reporting means jumping to conclusions, planting seeds of doubts and scariest of all, spreading hatred. When you watch news as the real life drama unfolds, you have a set of questions in your mind, genuine, real questions and the answers you get form news channels are at a different level altogether. You are thinking about the hostages and how many there are and what are the demands of the perpetrators of these events and in the end you only see tens of army personnel or special forces/commandos storming buildings and bringing out bodies and a death toll that keeps rising. You want to know if there are any people stuck in the room where fires are raging and you only find out much later that three bodies burnt alive in that fire because news channels did not ask these questions. So, you wonder whose questions these news channels are answering? Because the answers are not human answers, they are organizational answers. Questions news channels ask are, is India going to break off the round of talks that it has started with Pakistan or pressurize Pakistan to provide serious answers. As if Pakistan is providing a hideout to terrorists in the President's house! When they bring in 'experts' to provide analysis of the event, these 'experts' bemoan and liken their event to past events in New York and London...as if events closer to home in Islamabad, recently when a 5 star hotel was attacked had no significance. Maybe it didn't, after all it belonged to a category called Pakistani, Muslims, a category unfamiliar to these 'experts'.
Spreading hatred for invisible categories, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, West, Pakistan... These are collective nouns for human beings. Pakistan and India has the capability to trigger a nuclear attack on each other in 3 minutes. Who will die in these attacks? Neil Kumar, a 22 year old MA student of Urdu Literature in Delhi, coming back from his university, buying dahi bada from a theiley walla or maybe Salma Jahan of Lahore, a 13 year old girl with huge crush on Shahrukh Khan, while returning from watching Rub nei Bana dei Jodi in Cinema. Its therefore not about Pakistanis or Indians or about Hindus or Muslims, its not about Jews or Christians, nor about East versus West, its about names, relationships, people, human beings!
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