The airing of video images of AIIMS student’s burning Dr Ambedkar’s books sent a chill down my spine. Images of a doom-laden future flashed by my mind.
The reservation issue is going out of hand and unless it is addressed by non-political citizens our land may become unsafe. I would like to ask the students who committed this horrendous act whether they remember Dr Ambedkar has being the main author of the very constitution that allows them to express themselves, albeit negatively. I would like to ask the pro reservation students whether they realise that no child asks to be born in a particular family? Can I ask them to remember that all Indian children are born in the same way, after a gestation of nine months and are protected by the same laws? And finally can I ask them where this hatred will lead in an already electrically polarised society.
I have seen that a mere fight between two ladies over the issue of a petticoat to dry turned into a caste riot in seven minutes. Is not the duty of educated and supposedly high caste students to heal rather than aggravate. Can I also ask the students to look at their other caste peers with their heart and not with borrowed vision and find if there is anything to hate. Or in a gandhian way can I ask these angry children of India to take one tiny dalit baby and give him or her the same childhood and teen years as they had and then to see whether they are still worthy of hate.
My mind boggles at all the questions that are choking me. I am neither pro nor anti reservation. I just want every child to be given the same opportunities and then find his or her place in the sun.
is that asking too much?
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