Picture an incident of decimation of ideals of freedom of expression, destruction of democratic idea, undermining of human ethos and cremation of an already dead secular state which served only few. With human life getting reduced to near negligence and the dogma of non-violence turning into sheer fallacy, a severe terrorisation is spreading as a result of extremist actions taken by a section of society. A subtle functioning of a social segment is blaming victim for inviting death and completely veiling the heinous barbarism of the attacker. The pillar of trust in better communal values is shaking and the social institutions are facing newly spawned challenges. The situation is a combustible mix waiting for any small element to increase the heat.
I am describing the case of killing of a human due to alleged blasphemy against a holy figure of another section of society – Muslims. Just that this is not only the description of Kamlesh Tiwari’s case but also of every other victims who got killed for the same reason, be it Charlie Hebdo employees or Mahashay Rajpal or anyone else. These were the humans whose lives were reduced to negligence.
These were the times when ideals of non-violence were dented, democratic-secular idea was assassinated and dogma of non-violence was reduced to sheer fallacy. These were the times when the established social beliefs and communal ethos were challenged by the actions of few radicals. More disturbingly, these were the times when everything good of humanity was burned in fire, fire caused by that entire section which supported those few radicals. These were the times which unambiguously left an underlying message – You dare ‘disrespect’ that man and you are a dead man walking. No amount of economic growth, socio-cultural prosperity or globalisation has changed that fact even a bit.
The radicals – who always tend to find excuses for justification of their radicalisation – never evolves by the course of time; they remain confined in the schizophrenic box of religious exclusivity. Time elopes, humanity expands and society enlarges; but the radicals, as a sturdy large rock, never evolves from their forest animal behaviour. And when a society or certain section of that society is governed by those radicals, as per their forest animal ideology, it poses a surmounting threat to everything relating to the betterment of humanity. It’s extremely difficult to change those radicals in few years, and that section of society for that matter.
Despite the history of last entire millennia screaming and screeching in the testimony of that fact, the modern society has been continuously delusional and banal when it came to standing up to reality. The culprits – the brutal radicalised barbarians – were and are still veiled. The real ideals and dogmas which inspired a person to inhumanly assassinate other were and are deliberately ignored as something unrelated. Another section of the society – the extremism justifiers who masquerade as champions of liberal values – was and is active in humanising the culprits and is consistent at pouring the molten lava of dehumanisation on the already suffering victims.
Few supposed harbingers of mode of information communication or journalism, then and now, has been excellent at filtering the information and news for the benefit of the same section of society which empowers the culprits. The social hierarchy of significance for these delusional mud-rolling bivouacs works in strange ways – radicals and extremist of one particular community being on the top spot and compassionate sensible persons being on the lowest. The same complex ship of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and multifariousness of the same society drowns at one point when a person from minority is killed and floats smoothly at the same point when a person from majority is brutally assassinated.
On the other hand, we have the state which fails to live up to reality. Post democratisation, with the bunch of incredible democratic values, we also got the dangers of mainstreaming or institutionalising the rotting banal ultra-liberal compulsions. As in the case of secularism and secular state compels the establishment to disengage itself with any religion. This case of secular state has, in order to achieve its quest, as feared, turned into that ultra-secular or pseudo-secular banal working machine which has developed a proclivity to undermine everything of majority religion. And despite a millennia long history mirroring the state, the state, indulged in pseudo-secular banality, refuses to see in the mirror which eventually harms the innocents and empowers the radicals.
And on top of all that, we have a society in which community of the victims fail to organise itself for the betterment of its own. The Hindus, as in case of Kamlesh Tiwari, rarely stood by him in all possible ways, never organised themselves to create a social consciousness regarding the dangers from radicals they collectively faced. The Hindus are mostly sleeping until the night crawling danger of other section’s extremism barges into the homes, destroying everything.
As made clear from plethora of cases, like of Kamlesh Tiwari, in the past, our society sees the bear of radicalisation as the panda of secularism until the bear attacks. Kamlesh Tiwari again evinces the age old downside of our social paradigm.
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