Our most basic duty amidst Occupation as it goes on, against tragedy, amidst calamity, against the killing, the squealing and sudden stopping of children, of mothers and fathers, of who would’ve been our neighbours, our friends, our grocers, our doctors, our milk- men, our colleagues, our poets, our lovers, our citizens, is the continuous, unceasing attempt to eradicate ignorance.
Of the absence of knowledge, of the absence of discussion, of debate, of agile cogitation, of questioning and re- questioning. Of reading and publishing. Of debating. Of learning. For among the worst is always counted, the unheard, unacknowledged, unknown death of a fact. To let a fact be obscured, to let suffering be obscured in ignorance, in the refusal to see and understand, to disacknowledge. To withdraw our collective human understanding, to unnaturally inure ourselves against it. To commit a kind of treachery against oneself.
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We aren’t powerless individuals. We must refuse to believe so. Tragedy and suffering ask us of it. Our ‘power’ that carries its legitimacy is born of our belief, our earnest, untainted, wielded faith in our Constitution, our conscience, our humane understanding of the human spirit. Our Constitution constantly consolidates the creation of conducive places and spaces of thought, of deliberation, of reasonable action to address and disseminate facts, occurrences. This is how and where ‘information’ is born. Information truly cannot be born, disseminated unless we are willing to inform ourselves of the butchery that surrounds us. Everything, everything must be tested on the ore- strength anvil of Constitutional morality. Our conscience which must be an internalisation of this morality, must guide our thought, our choices.
If the aim of life is to realise ‘Satya’, then ignorance is death. There is no ‘Satya’ in the lack of the understanding of a collective human spirit. A collective human condition.
The very nature of Democracies and the civic life has necessitated and dictated this truth – that there is no stoppage of Occupation, imposed exile, violation of human rights in the absence of its knowledge. In ignorance. Butcheries and human- calamities can no longer be snuffed out like a burning wick by monarchs. Our belief in the fact that as a global life we have progressed through time, through eras as more rational, more humane humans requires us, impels us, presses us to address and highlight, to call out such violations. There is no neutrality of the individual, of the human heart, of a living breathing thinking feeling mind, amidst tragedy. An abstraction, a theoretical, societal construction may afford to be neutral. But you and I, must choose. Must constantly evaluate and must choose, again and again and yet again, to be on the right side.
Alas there are no right sides in ignorance. There are no directions of morality, of conscientious moving to be found there. But ignorance too is a choice. A choice after which there are no choices (for those that wish to remain there).
