Time to regain our humanity

Are we losing our humaneness in the mad rush for riches and in arrogance to stamp out the rest of the world and make sure we get our due? Right or wrong! Such thoughts no doubt start troubling our minds when we hear of shocking incidents like the one in Delhi on New Year’s when a young woman was dragged by a car with five occupants in it for several kilometres, leading to an agonising death.

The national capital is in the throes of huge protests over the gruesome incident with the truth yet to emerge as a full-fledged probe is still on. This also reminds us of a similar happening about ten years ago – when a young paramedic student was gangraped and brutalised, succumbing to her injuries a few days later, arousing nationwide indignation.

The incident that occurred during the tenure of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, led to a deafening chorus to ensure women’s safety, triggering spontaneous anti-government agitations. These are no minor incidents involving solitary souls – they play havoc with the conscience of a nation raising a huge question mark over whether we are fast losing our moorings as a compassionate, kind-hearted and understanding society with hate, ruthlessness and prejudice holding sway.

Social mores are no doubt going through an upheaval as we get more and more integrated with the western world – marriages are getting substituted with live-in relationships that even conservative families have no option but to accept or face a full-blooded revolt by their young ones. The case of Shraddha Walker, the woman who was allegedly chopped into 36 pieces by her boyfriend with whom she was in a relationship for several years without getting married, is enough to prove that hate can take grotesque forms when personal ties go awry with humaneness the last thing most people have on their minds as they go about their gory acts.

There was a time when family and social ties mattered a lot; when companionship and the warmth of human bonds could override negative instincts but no more. The pressures of modern living, the multiplicity of choices one has and the urge to outdo others at any cost are wrecking the softer instincts we all cherish in our hearts, like kindness and empathy. It’s a mad rush for success at any cost, wealth unlimited and social statuses that can help people skip a few rungs on the career ladder to reach the top.

In a nation of a billion souls, there are many who may tend to dismiss these incidents as inevitable but they fail to see the trends emerging in social behaviour; harmony is increasingly a casualty when chauvinism and religious jingoism take over. The harping on our religious identities rather than on the great chord of unity that binds us together as citizens of this great nation is increasingly making people turn their backs on those in their neighbourhood with whom they even once rubbed shoulders.

It’s only the collective psyche of the nation that can stop us from going over the precipice and becoming cold-hearted beings ploughing out lonely furrows in our quest for success. A nation united in its will to usher in a compassionate society that brooks no evil nor will tolerate any kind of ill-feeling is no doubt possible in an age when digital technology and social media have united us like never before.

And like the Delhi car incident or the Shraddha case prove, a commonality of thought and purpose are sure to emerge in this nationwide discourse that should be enough to discourage those who harbour such ill-feelings from even daring to think that they can get away with such dastardly crimes.