Chants all around, a sea of unidentified faces demonstrating, sticky afternoon heat, sporadic fires at several places and definite cloud of nervousness and tension in the air. Not the type of situation i expected to find myself on an idlylic thursday afternooon. My intention was to reserve ticket for my journey to Banglore and i decided to walk from Marine Lines to CST. Little did i know what i would be witnessing.
Though this was not a riot but it had all the potential to be one. Today's monring paper reported that nearly 1,50,000 people of the muslim community protested the arrival of Bush. My first impression was that it is a protest regarding the cartooning episode. From St Xaviers to reach CST it took me more than an hour to simly wade through the sea of angry protestors.
A hell lot of disturbing questions were raised in my mind during that time. I simply cannot seem to fathom that 1,50,000 young people would actually have no work in life but to raise such a ruckus. It definately was not a peaceful protest , anything that disturbs normal civic life is not peaceful in my opinion. Also i saw a man in a taxi been beaten up for no apparent reason and the taxi damaged a bit. The mob tried to pull the man out and had they succeeded in doing that it would have been the end for him. This happened barely 25 metres from where i was standing and had it not been for some police whistles the situation would have gone out of control. Then i started wondering about what actually motivates the mob, what is the fuel for this engine and it is definately not concern for a cause. I bet half of them do not know anything about George Bush except that he is the president of US and is connected in some way to the war in Iraq. So then i realised the actual motivation for these people. I could see it in their eyes and their body language. It was simply power, they had the power at that point of time to run amok and simply nobody could have stopped them not even the police who were badly outnumbered. The city had to listen to them for those 3 hours of protest. They had the power to bring it to the standstil and whack any layman on the street. This is what everyone in that crowd enjoyed and were motivated by.
As i was approaching this huge crowd , my instincts told me that i could be dangerous and asked me not to venture out. But i simply had to experience this and see how it actually is in such situations. One does not need much to infuriate such a mob and for the situation to go out of control. A small incident is enough to trigger off a massive backlash from the mob. Now i can understand better what it must have been at Babri masjid or during the Bombay riots and more recently the shameful Godhra riots.
To go further i thought about the muslim community as a whole . Such incidents just adds to the image which i and many of my friends share that the community is by nature a vociferous community and also tends to be violent. It is true that much of this image has been wrongly portrayed and is representative of a small minority of this community, but this is the exact image that the western powers use to justify their actions against the Muslim community. And such incidents simply add to this image. What the muslim community needs is a major repositioning exercise and they have to portray themselves in a different light if things are ever to improve.
Though this was not a riot but it had all the potential to be one. Today's monring paper reported that nearly 1,50,000 people of the muslim community protested the arrival of Bush. My first impression was that it is a protest regarding the cartooning episode. From St Xaviers to reach CST it took me more than an hour to simly wade through the sea of angry protestors.
A hell lot of disturbing questions were raised in my mind during that time. I simply cannot seem to fathom that 1,50,000 young people would actually have no work in life but to raise such a ruckus. It definately was not a peaceful protest , anything that disturbs normal civic life is not peaceful in my opinion. Also i saw a man in a taxi been beaten up for no apparent reason and the taxi damaged a bit. The mob tried to pull the man out and had they succeeded in doing that it would have been the end for him. This happened barely 25 metres from where i was standing and had it not been for some police whistles the situation would have gone out of control. Then i started wondering about what actually motivates the mob, what is the fuel for this engine and it is definately not concern for a cause. I bet half of them do not know anything about George Bush except that he is the president of US and is connected in some way to the war in Iraq. So then i realised the actual motivation for these people. I could see it in their eyes and their body language. It was simply power, they had the power at that point of time to run amok and simply nobody could have stopped them not even the police who were badly outnumbered. The city had to listen to them for those 3 hours of protest. They had the power to bring it to the standstil and whack any layman on the street. This is what everyone in that crowd enjoyed and were motivated by.
As i was approaching this huge crowd , my instincts told me that i could be dangerous and asked me not to venture out. But i simply had to experience this and see how it actually is in such situations. One does not need much to infuriate such a mob and for the situation to go out of control. A small incident is enough to trigger off a massive backlash from the mob. Now i can understand better what it must have been at Babri masjid or during the Bombay riots and more recently the shameful Godhra riots.
To go further i thought about the muslim community as a whole . Such incidents just adds to the image which i and many of my friends share that the community is by nature a vociferous community and also tends to be violent. It is true that much of this image has been wrongly portrayed and is representative of a small minority of this community, but this is the exact image that the western powers use to justify their actions against the Muslim community. And such incidents simply add to this image. What the muslim community needs is a major repositioning exercise and they have to portray themselves in a different light if things are ever to improve.
6 comments:
Hey Harsh,
I too witnessed the same thing yesterday while going back home from office. My parents were too apprehensive and wanted me to reach home asap. Somehow I wanted to witnessed that and could understand wat actually must have gone through during mumbai riots. We all have similar feeling about Muslim community and how they need to reposition it.
Overall it was a sad story and a very kiddish behaviour to destroy our own infrastructure and beat our own people for a person who has devasted a country which is is no way to my opinion concerned to us. The incident has aroused so many questions which never gonna be answered!!!!
Incidents like these will never cease and the questions do not seem to have any answers
hey comeon, I am sure being part of a big mob protesting and having the city for urself for sometime is a lot of fun. I'l love to be part of something like this where for sometime u can leave conscience back at home and hide behind a "cause for the kom" and mix with a mob, which as we all know, has no mind. burn this, break that, bash up that guy who u wudn't if u werent backed by thousand others, its that time when ur inferiority complex disappears in the strength of the thousands. goign back to the anti-denmark protest, there was some fundamentalist leader from UP who told his people they should stop buying Pepsi and Coke. lol! Whats Pepsi and Coke got to do with the guy who made the cartoon? I bet 90% of the people who were part of mob dont know where denmark is (even i had to check the map to be sure). burn a flag, burn an effigy , yell MC BC MC BC. its fun.
@ heyz : Rationality seems to be a dying concept , aint it?
Rationality was always a counter culture, and it will always be so.
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