Peshawar attack reminds me of the incident of Dhemaji, a town in upper Assam where 16 children were killed in the playground on August 15, 2004. The children died because they were celebrating Independence Day though extremist organisations had forbidden it. It also reminds me of December 16. It was on December 16, 2012 that a 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist (Nirbhaya) boarded an unregistered bus and was gang raped in a case that led to nationwide protests and forced authorities to tighten laws on sex crimes. I still remember the premeditated murder of kids at Akshardham in 2002; remember the massacre caused by placing bombs in the maternity ward of a government hospital. This is not all. I still remember the kids who were the victims of the Hindu-Muslim riots in India; the 1984 anti-Sikhs riots, the 1988 ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits; and the genocide unleashed on Yazidis.
My body is numb and feels hard like wood hearing the news of terrorist attack on innocent children in Peshawar on December 16, 2014 — the attack on a school that killed 148 people, most of them teenagers. It’s a black day for humanity. They were killed for no fault of their own. I wonder where peace went, if I’d never heard of this sort of inhumanity, I wouldn’t feel the pain. Which religion and faith in the name of God allows this? The mental anguish of losing a child is beyond compare. Oh God! You existence is being questioned now as the world sheds tears for those innocent souls!
This happens when we mix religion with politics. It’s a sad and sick world, where children are killed in the name of God and politics. Clearly, the Peshawar attack once again proved that if politics enters religion, it will have a bad effect on society and causes riots. Religion should be separated from politics.
