Who is lighting the fire and who is claiming to be the fire-fighter? This is a question coming into the minds of many right-thinking Goans who have only seen peace, harmony and brotherhood for years and years in Goa.
The Chief Minister of Goa has given a call to Goans not to fall to attempts at disturbing harmony. But every Goan is asking why a sudden narrative of communal disturbance is there when there was no disturbance at all.
If true sons and daughters of the soil had not exercised patience and restraint, recent controversies could have blown into to larger communal flare-ups. It is the patience and maturity of right-thinking Goans, across communities, that the sinister and evil designs of those who are constantly provoking & igniting tensions were not successful.
Goans don’t need to take pledges of harmony. The togetherness of Goans was as normal as breathing, for centuries.
Goa has always been an abode of peace. The Chief Minister should also be confident that true Goans do not need to take any pledge to ensure that they will not fall prey to those who are trying to disturb the peace of their motherland.
For centuries they never had to meet these challenges or pressures because communal harmony was so much a part of their lives that it needed no additional pledges or promises. It was like breathing. Why should that change now?
Therefore, why are we hearing this constant buzz about communal disturbance when there was no disturbance ever? Goans are sure that the Chief Minister and his law-and-order machinery have understood that so many of these tensions across Mapusa, Calangute, Chicalim, etc, have a DNA that can be identified.
Has the law-and-order machinery addressed and taken to task those who dictate to the police machinery, who ‘identify’ who the suspects are and ‘hand’ them to the police and call for arrests, as if they are judge, jury and executor, without allowing anyone to point a finger at them?
The law and order machinery is run by elected people, and they should know that their role is to protect their electors, not strike fear in them.
Shouldn’t the system look carefully at those forces that refuse to let an issue die down? Even when a man of faith against whom certain groups made accusations and demanded his arrest, offered his ready ego-less regret and sincerely asked to be forgiven if he had caused any hurt, the same forces demanded his arrest again, in an unrelated incident in another part of the State.
This forceful dragging on and dragging in of people and making them selective targets, is an alarm bell already heard by right-thinking Goans. Goans are not fools. They understand when a fire-lighter is pretending to be a fire-fighter. They are sure the CM will understand this too.
Therefore, when a system promises to be a fire-fighter, it should know who the fire-lighters also are. And the system should not be a party to knowingly or unknowingly allowing the fire-lighters claim to be firefighters.
The fire-fighters know who they are; you can awaken one who is fast asleep, but can never awaken the one pretending to sleep.
Mahatma Gandhi’s exact words were: “But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending (to) sleep.”
Those who are trying to invade Goa’s peace are pretending to sleep. And they are not really in hiding. But they need to be formally identified, named and taken action against. And they are not the true sons and daughters of this soil, not children of this great land. They are forces who are attempting to change Goa’s character, its way of life, its principles and above all its unity. Goans will never let that happen. And the Chief Minister, one understands, will not let it happen because he has taken an oath to protect the Constitution.
Finally, the fabric of harmony will never be touched as long as those who are elected to protect the Constitution always keep humanity above communities, and the power of the system is used for the protection of humanity and not specific communities.
As long as this understanding is there, people do not need to make pledges. Because simple ordinary Goans will NEVER be fire-lighters. They are born fire-fighters.
