Vivekananda Vichar Manch

Few days back Vivekananda Vichar Manch put up a poster. Being an inveterate poster reader, I stopped to read it.

The Vichar Manch wanted citizens to get together, think and act. The manch was worried about the security situation in India. They listed items starting from the beginning. They named the bombings, the burning of trains, etc.etc. All in all there were 20 or so items that merited attention. Amazing. I glanced through the items.

It truly was amazing. Not a word about Babri Masjid or the Gujarat riots or the attacks on the church. In fact not a single word about the activities of the Hindu fundamentalists.

I have been thinking a lot about this particular issue. Especially, because of the latest arrests by the police of the perpetrators of bombings in Delhi. Almost all of them are young- 22-23 years old- and many of them are University students. So why would they do something so ghastly?

The thing is that none of these people are foreigners of the famous foreign hand that Indira Gandhi was so fond of talking about. These kids are Indians, grew up here in our country, and yet did some thing stupid and idiotic like this. I shudder to think what they must be going through in the hands of the police. And I wonder about those families who lost their near and dear ones in the bombing.

Why did these kids do it? Was it brain-washing, or was it in revenge? What was it that motivated them?

The point is that we live in a pluralistic society. The kind of attitudes that is propagated by fundamentalists- Hindu, Islam, Christian- does no good to anyone other than breed more hatred. That is why I dislike the kind of posters that Vivekananda Vichar Manch put up.

I did what I usually do under such circumstances- wrote a story. It helped me stabilize a bit.

The views of Vivekananda Vichar Manch can be read here.