Everybody loves a good communal riot and secularists: A cynic’s perspective

Communal riots are culmination of mistrust and prejudices that are created within communities, this could be religious or caste based or ethnicity. Understandably not many are much bothered about what leads to these situations this is something that is left for common people to negotiate or deal. Rich sections are rarely affected by communal riots or any form of social disruption (sometimes they do get inconvenienced though, and they create biggest hooplas over smallest of discomfort). A communal riot itself present lots of possibilities depending on which community is involved and how many get killed. People get killed for no reason of theirs all the time and in all the place but that is nobody's business…death need to have possibilities of exploitations among living and yes we don’t know the religion of people who die in the street do we?.

So undoubtedly the best possible situation for elite section in this country is when Muslims are victims there are peace marches, seminars, movies, songs and so on, it has also has international possibilities. They are the first ones to set shops around these tragedies. Some have made successful career out of these miseries. These people don’t have much impact on common people, and they will never face the situations which the common people find themselves in, some do make valiant attempts to understand but vicarious is always vicarious. Importantly why are we really bothered about these people to come and understand us?. They are no saviors; they only try work out their little life. Their life is least threatened and yes they are not going to miss their lunch for anyone. For us these are jokes that get repeated every time, and every time there are new gainers over the dead bodies and miseries of common people. Indeed the clever breed is least bothered about victims apart from what they can accrue, their aim being to showcase themselves to the bigger world, where appreciations are shared over nice talks (I scratch you scratch me world). A world that most of us don’t really much understand although quite ironically it is supposed to be about us.

Common people don’t really understand secularism or these big talks on tolerance. There are some serious issues that they have to face daily and every moment. Disruption means monetary loss, loss means further misery. So why would anyone indulge in anything that will lead to misery?. Isn’t that simplest thing to understand?. So why does riots happen?. There have been tons of articles and books written on these matters. Whatever the argument this blogger is very clear that poorer people will never instigate these, it just doesn’t make any sense to them. Riots kill common people, it gives them untold misery. So clearly it is engineered by people who stand to gain. And as I see it there are two distinct groups who feed from these miseries. One is the city based elitist secularists, also referred to as liberals (a word I came across only recently and haven’t really understood, but I gather it is a common reference point in West) and another is fundamentalist of all variety, also referred to as conservatives. Both of them always stand to gain and they come from same strata, they have their own theories (experience though is meant for common people) to justify themselves. These two groups feed on each other at the expense of common people. They exchange vicious attacks on each other. Some even lack basic decency, all crudeness justified from their own perspective- some for secular reason others for fundamentalist agenda. For a common man they don’t look much different nor do they affect him much atleast till its killing time. Many in media has made the situation precarious with competitive exaggerations (positive side is that active media does bring out the culprit, but that is after the riots, after people have been killed, property looted. Frankly like any other common people I am not really bothered about what happens after riots, indeed we want to forget and get on with our life with whatever is left without getting into anymore trouble. People with money and time can do the postmortem, write essays and score secular or non secular points. It doesn’t really affect common people).

With media and its simplistic version to life (of course there are exception but rare) world gets divided into two easy compartments the good and bad, or this view versus that view. I understand this strict world view also originates in western subconscious of God and Satan that is fed to them for centuries this has found its way through globalized market into our homes. The black and white world, either you are with us or with them (note communism, another of western import, plays on the same parameter). This is the world that is easy to understand, it also is the world the seculars and fundamentalist have positioned themselves quite nicely, so whatever happens it gets divided between them. Market media is therefore left with the simple task of providing a platform for apportioning the dividends, and also help constantly deepening the divisions in the name of discussion, in the name of assertion of freedom. So a secular party will remain secular whatever crap it does within that framework and fundamentalist will have to be pushed further and further even if they would like to be secular or mend their ways- that will make secular defunct, and so Madani will be condemned forever and BJP will be chastised for whatever it does. It is a self sustaining situation, it is a different matter though that these put common people in perilous situation. There is nothing like good people bad people there are situations some people exploit and there are people who are exploited, sometimes killed. Its about opportunities.

Post Script: this blog was written after an incident few weeks back. Here I was on my two-wheeler and this lady slips and fall in the traffic (nothing much happened to her), she happened to wear a burqa (meaning the fully covered one worn by very few muslim women in this part of the world), and instead of feeling sympathy for her situation I found myself cringing, a feeling of revulsion towards her came over for me, now this feeling is something I have increasingly observed among people towards this attire and the world view it represent. Suddenly I found myself appalled by my thoughts, looking at a suffering human not as human but as representation, as an object. This is exactly where prejudices get born, dehumanization begins.

(This blog is not over and will be continued further, will take some time to work out. I will like to explore how symbolism reduces common people to caricatures and help the powerful, as also what instigates divisive mindset…well something on that line. It should help me understand myself and the society better!!)