Being "inhuman" to Being Human

This piece of news got me writing after a short break of dull routine life. No no… this is by no means something hip and happening. Actually it’s a matter of shame.

Crowd watches as goons kill man on street in Coimbatore



photo courtesy hindustan times



This piece of news is not from a farming village of UP or from the small towns of yeateryear Bihar. This is form the one state which boasts of very high literacy rates, educated and cultured people and very less violence. Fortunately there was electronic eye-witness that helped the police.

Although we are now at ease with watching violence and deaths on TV, where the media reaches a remote accident spot before the administration and now we have on lookers who would enjoy the live action rather than helping someone in need or at the least call the cops.

There have debates that people generally keep themselves away from such situations due to various reasons. One of them being the harassment of becoming an eye-witness, basically the problems faced by eye-witness always goes unnoticed. First, once you become witness, you invite the wrath of the goons and become their next target. The police instead of engaging into witness protection programs will harass them with visitation to the police station umpteen times just for the sake of it.

But, this has to end somewhere, because the violence will rise just like inflation and no amount of policy changes can reduce them. People need to be more “human” when such situations arise. It is not expected that some heroic young guy will beat the goons and help the victims, but at the very least get the police to help them and the police should also try and provide lesser hassles for people who help a wounded on the street or take and accident victim to a hospital.

The more we think of ‘only’ the safety of ourselves the more we put us in risk. There has been much such news in the past where people from one apartment suffered and others in the vicinity did not even notice for months that things were going wrong.

Reminds me of the poem/quote by the anti-Nazi theologian Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the communists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me