SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Kajal Chatterjee
It is high time it needs to be asked whether mere utterance of "Happy New Year" would ensure happiness from the very first dawn of the change of the calendar! Rather we should all go all-out to make the New Year and the society happy by undertaking concrete steps. Not only should we try to have a good care of the person in ourselves and remain true to our respective professions delivering our honest best; but also provide justice to our conscience --- if our wish of a Happy New Year is indeed serious enough.
Why don't we care to even appreciate the pain of insulted grieved tensed hearts affected by such measures as NRC-CAA or unilateral fragmentation of Kashmir along with its demotion to mere Union Territory and months long stringent clampdown! Instead the majority went gaga in the name of "national interest"? Were the people of the geographically-physically-psychologically affected State not part of the nation! Were their interest not our interest also? Can the interest of a nation be served by overlooking the interest of section of people of that very nation? Just like millions of tiny droplets make an ocean, similarly millions of individuals form a nation and so psychological assault on a single individual is also a direct assault upon the nation. So our conscience demands that irrespective of the class or community of the victims (be he/she a single individual or a group of people), protest against injustice should be our urgent goal of life.
Just because "I am safe" or "not affected" does not mean that I would remain indifferent to the tragedy of hundreds who passed away prematurely in bank queues while trying to deposit or withdraw their own money or vulnerability of the millions of wage-earners who lost their jobs on the wake of demonetisation. How many of us feel the inconsolable pain of the lakhs who have passed away due to Covid or that of the family of the hundreds of poorest of poor who had passed away in hungriest of condition upon highways and railway tracks while forced to indulge in "Long March" thanks to instant lockdown without notice or the suffering of the millions who have lost their likelihood on the after effects of lockdown!
Can a mere piece of document be allowed higher place in society by overriding the highest truth of humanity? If ‘No’, then how can we afford to remain indifferent to persons already languishing in jails just because they could not produce certain documents and lakhs of others are set to move in detention centres! Or take the case of Rohingyas! Why can't we see our own children on the faces of the Rohingya kids who are witnessing hell under the God's sky along with their kith and kin! No wonder why enlightened persons like Rabindranath Tagore had repeatedly asserted humanity to be much greater than nationalism.
Real happiness can be achieved in the society only when we will try to feel a bit of sympathy and empathy in our souls for our fellow human beings. This will obviously lead to protest against injustice torture which will also put to end such ills thereby leading to a truly happy society where all days appear new enriching and worth living for.
