Saturday, March 28, 2009

Lessons From the Past

If one is a Tamil and talks about the Sri Lankan conflict, the person is seen as a LTTE sympathizer. I guess many Tamilians follow the Sri Lankan conflict simply because the brunt of the refugee problem is borne by people in Tamil Nadu. I am not writing this as a Tamilian but as a human being upset with the conflicts in this world. This post is not about the Sri Lankan crisis but this is about hate politics that is present in every part of the world.

Look around and you will find it everywhere. Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tibet, Myanmar, Ghaza, and the list goes on. It is not about taking sides and blaming who is right or wrong. It is about human rights and the lack of respect for human life by the parties involved in the conflict. In Sri Lanka a major sector of the population are not given equal rights only because they speak Tamil even though they have been in the country for centuries. In Pakistan, women are victimized in all possible ways to settle family feuds. Even though this has been happening in various parts of the world including India, it is a very common phenomenon in Pakistan. Talibanism is slowly spreading in Pakistan. One instance of atrocity is girls after the age of four are not allowed to study. . How do these countries plan on developing when 50% of their population are denied their basic rights? Conflicts in places like Myanmar, Tibet, and Middle East have been raging for years. During the Bosnian conflict, it was so heart wrenching to watch people begging to be allowed into other countries. These were people who were doctors, teachers or held other respectable positions in their own country and were suddenly forced to beg for survival. Almost the entire continent of Africa is like a ticking time bomb. The horror stories of such conflicts are shocking, to say the least. I felt ashamed being a human being when I heard such stories.

Why can’t we learn lessons from history? When Afghanistan was beginning to get ‘Talibanized’, we watched and did nothing. That problem continued to fester and spilled over to every part of the world. We should have learnt our lessons after the two world wars. But so many wars and conflicts have erupted since the World War II. How many more lessons do we need?

What makes such situations worst is the rest of the world plays escape politics. After World War II, every nation in the world is supposed to condemn and prevent conflicts whenever there is a case of ‘Ethnic cleansing’. Instead every country plays word games calling such conflicts everything but ethnic cleansing. For instance, the present Indian government has not really issued a statement condemning the attacks in Sri Lanka. There are reports that the government has supplied military power to the Sri Lankan government.

I am not suggesting all countries should go to war whenever there is a conflict. But we should force the parties involved in a conflict to sit down to negotiate.

Speaking of lessons from the past, I am scared of the hate politics that is going on in India. I sometimes see the kind of manipulation that happened during Hitler’s reign in Germany repeating in India. The similarities are just scary. The talks of pride for the country, the cultural guardians, the talk of victimization of Indians by external forces, threat to Indian cultural and so on. I am very much an Indian and I am more Indian than so called “Cultural Guardian”. So please stop all the propaganda for your personal benefits. We don’t need Hitlers ruling this country.

I know none of these parties deserve my vote but I don’t want my vote to be misused by the political parties. The first time I voted, it was easy to cast an invalid vote because it was on a ballot paper. The second time was on the voting machine so I was confused and was forced to vote for a lesser devil. This time I am going to find a way to cast an invalid vote on a voting machine. Any ideas how I can do it?

7 comments:

  1. Nice post!!! Hey, i suggest u not to waste ur vote!!! Choose the better (to say exactly the bad one) among the list of bad,worse and worst ones.

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  2. man..amazing work..u sound like big time politics columnist..great work!

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  3. Dont vote if u dont want to waste it... instead, smear a dot on ur finger to calm ur conscience down :)

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  4. @ Suneetha - Thanks .. i still hav time to make up my mind.
    @Videhi - Thanks :)
    @Nik - its not abt calming my conscience. I do not want someone misusing my vote, read use it rigging and hence the invalid vote.

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  5. i never have done any voting..and i don't think i will.. cos if they can give money and buy votes then how come my single vote is going to make any difference.. and there isn't anyone sensible i have found who really deserves to get any votes..

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  6. @Darshi - i agree..hey thanks for visiting

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  7. Drops of water make an ocean... If every sensible /educated person keeps thinking that "How would their single vote make a difference" and waste it.. How do you expect to bring in a change..I beleive in the current political scenario, voting for the least harmless candidate is better than we ending up with a more harmful person because we did not use our vote.

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