Something Wrong with the Way So Far

Harmony and security – both are above any religion. Some train passengers in Mumbai proved it by showing extra courage and standing for the truth. Sorry, if you want to know more about this, you have to contact my friend “Aditya” who is the eye-witness of this incident. What I can tell you is that he told me that he witnessed a shocking incident in a Mumbai local train. According to him, on October 18, a man (Mr X) who was not handicapped was travelling in a coach meant for handicapped people. Mr X found that a traveller was offering his evening prayers in the same coach. As the other fellow did not belong to the religion that Mr X belongs to, the prayer tortured him and hence he started abusing the earlier. Gradually, he raised his voice and also expressed his anger by exhibiting his expanded vocabulary of obscene words. Falling prey to the situation, the traveller was also getting angry but was helpless. Getting worse to worst, it got on the nerves of even the other passengers in the coach and in the neighbouring coach as well.

As they say every action has a particular reaction, when the train stopped at a station, some people who witnessed the nonsense happening from the neighbouring coach through the window got down, entered the coach of action and started beating Mr X. Surprisingly, the accused shouted saying “I am a police man”, inviting even more criticism and shame for himself. It was also found that Mr X, who was later thrown out of the train at a station, was drunk.

The incident raised two issues – one positive and one negative. The positive issue is that some of the people who beat Mr X may or may not belong to his religion. Justice was the religion here, which was served. However, we should bother about the negative issue more than just to rest on the positive one. We need to ask ourselves “when can we be able to FULLY accept differences and diversity?” We need to understand and make people understand that this is what forms our “composite” culture. There is definitely something wrong with the way so far even after more than 60 years of achieving independence from FOREIGN RULE. Real independence seems to be far away from us.