So vile, so wicked, yet so common
“We are living in a time of trouble and bewilderment, in a time when none of us can foresee or foretell the future. But, it is in times like these, when so much that we cherish is threatened, or in jeopardy, that we are impelled all the more to strengthen our inner resources, to turn to the things that have no news value because they will be the same tomorrow that they were today and yesterday – the things that last, the things that the wisest, the most farseeing of our race and kind have been inspired to utter in forms that can inspire ourselves in turn.”
–Laurence Binyon
Strange are the times we are living in: strange because these do not seem to carry any meaning or relevance for what we may or may not be engaged in doing. It is like our instinct is driving us in a direction that we neither understand nor relate to. It is as if we are propelled by some inner prompting towards a destination that that we don’t know much about, or the path that we have to take, or the direction we should follow. The whole undertaking is without a sense of devotion. Such are the times that we seem to be lost in.
These times have not come about suddenly. These are the product of days gone by, days spent without any purpose or devotion to a cause that would chisel the path to be taken, or the contours of the mission to be pursued. In a different way, these times reflect a loss of honour and self-respect. This state finds resonance in the words of Lewis Mumford who said: “When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement”.
It is time for people to stop becoming fodder for the political games of those who cannot look beyond their petty selfish interests. These vile actors don’t deserve any sympathy. They should be named, shamed and made to pay for their wickedness
In these times, so much has jumbled up that it is difficult to make out one thing from the other, to sift the good from the bad. But, then, the line that separates the two has been hazy for a while. At some places, it has even disappeared. So, the good may be construed as bad, and the bad painted as good. In fact, people are no longer driven by the correctness of what they are undertaking. Their sole criterion is whether the choice they are making will get them to their purported goal or not. If it does, it matters not whether the path they are choosing is right or not, whether it is within the ambit of law or nor, or whether it conforms to the social and moral benchmarks or not. The ultimate objective always justifies the means to get to the destination. So much is lost along the way that it may be difficult even to recognise ourselves as being the same people who had set out on the journey at the beginning. If it is success we are able to achieve, the change may even become a permanent feature of our pursuits.
There is much that has gone wrong which emanates from an intellectual collapse. That is the principal ailment that we suffer from. We had forgotten about the worth or value of the written and spoken word a long time ago. We are not interested in their existence any longer because we are so consumed with our fanciful and rabid wishes irrespective of the means and methods chosen for their fulfilment.
But such infatuation with self-aggrandisement entails a price which has to be paid because the law of nature does not always wait for the world after. Much is enacted here for all to see, for all to learn from. It is Faiz sahib who encapsulated it in his inimitable words in ‘Nida-e-Ghaib’:
“Reward and punishment shall be dispensed here
For here shall be enacted hell and paradise
Here shall be raised the call for the hereafter
Here shall be the doomsday.”
There is so much that I could refer to by way of amplifying what I am trying to put forth, all of which may not even be understandable for a large number of people. To cite just one example, look at the savage killing of 11 Hazara mine workers in Machh, Baluchistan. They were dragged out of their mud huts and butchered in the open. They were poor people who worked in abominable conditions to earn two measly meals a day. They had done no harm to anyone. They had no enemies. They were chosen by external conspirators, aided and abetted by local facilitators, to be eliminated to spread terror and fear. That they did, but they also did something else. They sowed the seeds of division and hatred among people which is, by far, the key agenda of the perpetrators. Why do we fall prey to their wicked machinations? Why do we let these evil forces rejoice in the success of their mission of pitting one against the other?
Over the last 73 years, the country has been rent asunder through excessive politicisation– both of the institutions and our thought processes. We are no longer capable of looking at things and evaluating them in their objectivity. We have to create a political context and then try to fit them in. That makes us lose our contact with reality and the way things should actually be seen as compared to how we would like to see them.
There are people who did not even spare the dead bodies of the Hazaras. They put them by the wayside and refused to remove them till their demands were met including the arrival of the Prime Minister. A team of federal ministers along with the provincial leadership visited the site of the dharna many times. After all their demands were met and a commitment made that the Prime Minister would also visit them soon, the protesters agreed to bury the dead. The families of the deceased were eager to do so all along, but some political charlatans degraded themselves to playing politics with the dead. They pressurised the families not to bury the bodies till the Prime Minister’s arrival.
This is a dastardly act which some evil minds manoeuvred to enact, getting the families of the dead caught up in a vicious tangle. This is no politics. This is enactment of evil itself. But, like I said earlier, for these wicked people, there is virtually no distinction between what is right and what is not. Anything that suits their ends is justified for them. Only the innocent suffer by getting caught up in such vicious cycles.
Like so much else before, this will pass. But it will leave behind immense pain. Why do we think of causing such afflictions to the unsuspecting and the innocent? Why do we push them into a web of deceit and play with their emotions? This is so cruel, so evil.
It is time for people to stop becoming fodder for the political games of those who cannot look beyond their petty selfish interests. These vile actors don’t deserve any sympathy. They should be named, shamed and made to pay for their wickedness.
