The Mosaic
August 27, 2010
The mosaic stretches across 28 states, 7 union territories, so many religions, so many castes, so many languages, genders, ethnicities, races…….
Every entity has borders. Borders are statements of the entity, like a personality. Borders are to differentiate. But when borders begin to bleed?
Like all entities this nation has its borders, within and for outside. It has its design. It has its mosaic…
But the design cuts deeper here, when ‘Bihari’ is a condescended word, when anyone from or roots in south is ‘Madrasi’, when ‘Aurat’ is defined as ‘dhakke rakhne ki cheez’, when Muslims are called ‘Traitors’, when genocide takes place in the name of religion….
When ‘the Different’ becomes ‘the Hated’ and ‘the Feared’, the design cuts deeper. People bleed, nation bleeds, society bleeds, rights bleed, equality bleeds, democracy bleeds, harmony bleeds, peace bleeds, progress bleeds…
Dogs bark down those outside their colonies. But we are not dogs, and we cannot live like them. We become human when we are able to see ‘different’ as different and nothing else. And we become Greater Human when we appreciate difference and enjoy it. And finally we become Even Greater Human when we fight to protect ‘the-wrong-side-of-different’, work to counter hate with love and spread fraternity within hostility.
