We are hijacked.

I have been trying to make sense of some hope in this scheme of things where one ugly reality is followed by an uglier reality and you don’t know where and when will this end? Will it, I can’t say.

It took me 5 days to stop myself from writing something that makes us collectively loose hope.

What is the problem?

We are hijacked, in a system where those in power determines what we think, and uses all facts and episodes of organised thought to tell us what we should think.

Things are pretty broken.

Our forefathers attempted to create a nation that stood by values of love, values of living peacefully in diversity. Back in school, I recall slogans of “India’a unity in diversity”. There may not have been exposure to its diversity, for me as a child, and perhaps for many others. There might be unawareness, of not knowing many different groups but there wasn’t hate and anger that was underlining those emotions, like they are today. Of people, unknown and un-met. 

How the hell things turn so bad?

We are never born with prejudices, somebody tells us that we need to hate someone and protect someone. And that is usually for someone else’s interest, the one who is telling you to discriminate.

We are angry at each other. We have lost patience to hear a non-convenient story, we have lost patience to engage with views and opinions other than ours. We love to live in our own selective realities.

Our country’s getting more divided and impatient, and we don’t realise we are the ones paying the price. We don’t even talk to each other about it so often. 

Many of us can’t even relate to values of patriotism anymore.

What I wanna know is how do we fix it?

Researchers looked at movements from across the world and found that if 3.5% of the population actively engages in a movement, they win! Every single time.

In India, 3.5% is 46 million people. 

And it needs to be from all of us – Kashmiri, Assamese, Muslims, Left, Dalits, Women, LGBTs, conservatives, farmers and even Hindus – ALL. No one group has the power to do it alone. 

Millions are already involved in their own geographies, dimensions, contexts, scope and possibilities. But we need millions more of us, and which is what made me write this.

All I feel is that everyone has to do something. 

You do something.

Because you can be damn sure, if you do nothing, nothing is going to change.

What can we do to fix this?

#Join the struggles on the streets, blossoming everywhere.

And if that’s not for you,

• #Talk this out, around you. Use your ability of head and heart, to spread the spirits of this land  the spirits of integrity. Humanise the people that have become just objects of angst for many around us. Don’t loose hope, don’t get agitated, just keep pressing the human that we all are and connect.

• #Reject any form of acceptance from the government, whether it’s in citizen certificates or fees hike. Attempt to live like a registered minority in your country. #civildisobedience

• #Abstain from entertainment and distractions, (Like Marx once write, there can’t be a revolution, till we have football matches!” and bring the miseries that we are living in your daily circles. Feel the gloomy realities of this country and let that be felt in every conversation you make. At a post on Jashne-rekhta someone responded by saying- “Mar gayi bulbul qafas mein, Keh gayi sayyaad se. Apni sunehri g***d mein, Tu thoons le fasl-e-bahaar”_Arundhati Roy. With all due respect to Jashne-rekhta, It just doesn’t feel the right time for Jashn. Arundhati’s bad attempt on shayari sort of boils down the point.

• Don’t loose the #sight of what is happening around, every small chance that you get in living on the spirits of this nation, live it, make everyone around feel the power of love and compassion.

Let’s take back, what is ours to carve, back in our hands – the future stories that will make our country!

Don’t let hatred win over love, it’s in our hands.

Special thanks to excerpts from work of Michael Douglas, Arundhati Roy and Harsh Mander.

#notinmyname

#cab

#nrc

#unityindiversity