We The People

We The People

      As human we cannot escape the trauma of death of beloved ones leaving us naturally but when parents lose young son the pain is unbearable. The untimely death when it comes on an alien land the agony multiplies, worse when it is due to no fault of his, no words can express the pain. The family of Anuj Bidve is going through what no parents should go, loss of young son. Anuj was shot through head by unidentified assailants, the motive still not known. The most unfortunate part the news reached to the parents through facebook. The life of Bidve family was filled with sorrow, the loss was irreparable.

  The Manchester police contacted the family, expressed deep regret, updated them about the investigation status. The team of police officers came to India, met the bereaved family, expressed condolences. The team took the parents to U.K. They visited the spot of crime. They also met the leaders of U.K. requesting them to look after the safety of the young Indians. The leaders also shared their concerns, assured them of safety. It took 11 days to take the remains of Anuj to India. What a painful journey they had been through. Hats off to them they maintained decorum, kept the sorrow to themselves, no public display of mourning, held nobody responsible for this, demanded justice, remained private as much as they could.

     The British police earned respect of all those Indians who understand what it means to come all the way to India to meet the family of victim. They even apologized to the family for not being able to inform them about the incident immediately. Difficult to believe in a country where systemic apathy is taken for granted. Heard of policemen harassing the victims but expressing grief, apologizing for the crime that suddenly stopped the journey that otherwise would have been fascinating, full of energy, happiness, is difficult to imagine.

      Just have a look at how we responded to the incident. An article in Loksatta, a Marathi daily with comments appreciating the family and police of U.K. and sharing the grief, a similar report on a Marathi news channel, many friends, relatives gave support but overall in Maharashtra we witnessed a killing silence, the reason may be that things like this in Indian context are not new. Our system indeed has failed to appreciate the family that behaved with great restrain, maintained composure. We were not able to put a front beyond Pune in support of the Bidve family, nevertheless the internet community did contribute but it is a fraction compared to our huge society. The people of U.K. did their best to express condolences, they got united in support of the family, we failed less as a society,more as a system.

   Our leaders who are always emotionally charged up when addressing the constituency that votes them. When they stand to deliver an emotional speech, to raise the sentiments, to flare up the mob, they are best actors but no one could spare some time to visit the bereaved family. All are busy in the political strategies but social responsibility is never on the agenda. Look at the way the Bidve family maintained silence on the apathy of our leaders, they could have easily used media to target the political class but no they accepted it as their fate. What Manchester police did all the way coming from UK our system could not do it from few kilometers. Neither in this case nor in other cases similar to this, our police don’t show such solidarity as the system is built like this. As for our political class they respond only when they sense the possibility of their votes being affected.

      The evolution of society into a culture if at all has any parameter to judge then it is, how the society reacts to incidents like these. As it seems we have a lot of distance to cover. Our reactions in situations like these are more often individual. We share grief personally, we feel connected from thousand kilometers without even meeting. But our collective stand as a society depends often on our identity which we want ourselves to be linked to and not on tragedies like this.

  As a matter of fact unless we have war it’s really hard to unite us. Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar do unite us. This kind of unity is good, certainly necessary but for building national culture and developing social responsibility it is of little use, the reasons  can be attributed to its provisional nature. It is obvious that we are easily united as interest group based on caste, religion, language so much so that it is really easy to instigate us to resort to extreme measures. The mobs united on streets in the name of divisive ideologies, all fired up to protect the pride of a sect, don’t gather and work together for the non political social cause like this. We become so used to uniting on divisive agenda that we find it hard to get on agendas that are inherently social from which it’s difficult to draw political mileage. We see visits of leaders to slums, to the families of farmers but those don’t reflect in policies that would prevent occurrences of situations like this.

      In our country as big as this, tragedy is a norm rather than exception, but still the indifference of system cannot be in the interest of our evolution as a responsible society. In the event of crisis the response of a society is an index to its maturity. Our country has always been driven by the icons, lead by kings. We tend to seek emotional attachments at the top, ensconced there a king, a queen or a leader. We have rich tradition of individual greats but as a team we have often failed. Apart from the exceptions thrown by our army, the examples collective efforts, of team led by great men and equally committed members transcending human barriers and pushing the line of excellence farther are rare.          

     Those who are at the top love to ride on the waves of sentiments. In that sense also we usually fail to rise collectively as a society and system. Our individual reaction is undoubtedly compassionate but we find it really hard to put up shared platform where the sense of being one as a society, as a nation and also an urge to be part of the family as a society is expressed. A thousand people deeply sensitive, we can sense, but sharing a platform, we don’t see, for there is no platform. It doesn’t mean that all of us should flock around the family but there can be various ways in which the stage can be built without waiting for the establishment to work in this direction. That other than facebook there is no tangible effort, it is not a fault but this signifies where we stand as a society.

       This incident leaves many questions unanswered. Is it really feasible to have something of this kind in a country as big and as diverse as ours? With tragedies occurring at phenomenal rate can the system be expected to be sensitive to victims? Is the population the reason behind societal apathy? If so why our response to political, divisive agenda is fast, furious and pervasive? Is it really impossible for the leaders to share the grief? Is it so that it has nothing to do with our evolution as a culture? Is it that the UK police behavior is prompted by the sense of pride they always seek in being country of gentlemen? Why they approached to this case differently whereas our response was different? When a foreigner is being victimized we tend to get in to the protectionist mode than seek justice to victim? Is it that insensitivity of our system is closely linked to how society responds?

   The Bidve family has shown us the way one should maintain composure in this unbearable pain. The U.K. police has shown how a system should respond sympathetically, the leaders of U.K. whom the family met shown us how to express the solidarity and address to concerns and above all the family has shown how to make a common cause out of worst kind of tragedy by raising apprehensions about the safety of immigrants living in U.K. and request for their safety. No words can lessen burden of grief of Bidve family but if we mature as a society, our system gets sensitized to the sufferings of families of victims, we will be able to pay true tribute to Anuj.