Nights seem darker like never before, days have got shorter like never before. The people have become aggressive like never before. It is not just the onset of winter season which has affected the length of the days and nights but the man-made circumstances also. In our attempt to provide safety to the women, we have created an unsafe environment for the men. The women are facing the fear inside their houses for it has got manifested there whereas the men face it on the streets for it is evident there.
It is not all of a sudden that we are becoming intolerant, aggressive and violent but it is a long influence of the circumstances which we have been made to adopt for decades rather than making us deal with them.
Our political leaders have always taught us to assemble; assemble to shout, to disrupt, to rally for nothing. We were never assembled; to make decisions, to ponder, to discover, to rethink our approaches. We have been made to use our vocal cords more than our brains and have been conditioned to think that the physical strength is more important than our mental strength.
Why do we now act like witnessing the aggressiveness in us for first time when all of this is the another version of what has been happening around us for a longtime. Psychology says it that ‘seeing and experiencing violence’ makes aggression ‘normal’ for anyone; thus it is becoming easy for perpetrator to make people do ‘unfortunate things’ which they are actually susceptible to.
We are made to sit back in our homes for what? To find a solution for a problem or to get anxiety, stress ridden and feel depressed. We are being engaged in activities that just allow us to release our emotional energy rather than intellectual energy.
We have always believed in lies and have grown accustomed to spread them and all this was engrained in us to make it sure that we stay ignorant. For those who rule over our sentiments and aspirations, correcting us will amount to revealing their own failures. While satisfying us emotionally, We have been just apprised of our desires and not the capabilities of achieving those desires. We have just made stories out of our tragedies which at best invoke emotions rather than invoking support. We have build narratives and not our lives. We have led the people in such a hope that provoke them rather than saving them.
In the wake of braid cutting incidents in Kashmir, the problem of growing intolerance and violence in our society should be an eye-opener for us to realize that we have got a problem. By addressing the problems in us we may be not able to control the circumstances around us but we surely can minimize its influence.
We have never attempted to challenge the system that we have established ourselves but are always busy in challenging and critisizing the system which we claim to have never subscribed. In order to escape our own responsibilities we have always acted as followers and have never assayed to be our own leaders.
Aren’t we living in a denial that we stay united and are all active for finding the solutions to our problems? Shouldn’t we raise questions to ourselves rather than seeking answers from others? What has really changed from last 30 years? Why are we disoriented by the prospects of peace?
Why violence has to be an end and not a strategy? Why we always defend rather than listen, confront rather than collaborate? Why are we fighting each other, when we should be fighting the problems which confront us?
In the wake of braid cutting incidents in Kashmir, the problem of growing intolerance and violence in our society should be an eye-opener for us to realize that we have got a problem. By addressing the problems in us we may be not able to control the circumstances around us but we surely can minimize its influence.
(The author a pass out of Government Polytechnic College Srinagar is regularly contributing for the Edit Page of “Kashmir Horizon”. The views of the author are exclusively his own)
