Do we need Moral Policing?

Indians by nature have a tendency to mix up religion, traditions, myths, superstitions and caste system under the common umbrella of country's rich culture. Its all right if you do it at your home but once it goes out becomes the root cause of many complex and apparently insolvable problems. One such problem is the issue of moral policing. "Moral Policing" means the voluntarily harassment done upon people by some individuals,social groups or organizations in the name of guarding their societies when anything like that even doesn't have existence. Each day we see the newspapers piled up with news of some xyz group committing atrocities on people in the name of God, religion etc. Latest being a women stripped on Patna road because she was caught with his boy friend and its against the wish of descent society. What happened in Mangalore pub last year is not hidden from anyone but no strong action was taken against these self defined social policemen by the govt., may be they are more busy in discussing "Sach ka Samna" in parliament when they actually are running away from the truth. Women and minorities offer the soft targets to these social contractors and are often at the receiving end of their misdeeds.In the times when we are talking about India developing into a super power and are getting bold enough to discuss gay rights this is extremely annoying that constitutionally adult unmarried couples still fear in going out in public only due to the social policemen like shiv sena, ram sena etc. but do they really want a prosperous India, do they really worry about Indian women, have they done anything for millions of under nourished people? I seriously doubt their intentions. Where were these fundamentalists who claim to believe in the fundamentals of religion when a women was raped by a mob on a new year night at a place like Gateway of India? Nobody dares to ask them because of the tremendous power and influence they bear on our innocent public. In Manglore case even after rigorous lobbing done by National Women Commission the main accused Pramod Muthalik head of Sri Ram Sena was granted bail within a week of the incident. Whatz our judiciary doing, where the hell are the constitution provisions? This whole incident revamped the arguments to at least re-energize the system if not re-invent it but to do anything like that legislature comes in between and in post independence era one thing India have witnessed is a Jai-Veeru chemistry between politics and crime, so finally we ended up exactly from where we started. Everything is still not over but the need of the hour is to take right steps quickly and efficiently. A new piece of govt. act won't do the trick, there is an extreme need to reorganize the police force, create rapid action forces especially in metros and big cities, strengthen the independent bodies like NCW, NHRC, decriminalize politics and most importantly arouse social consciousness. There is an extreme need to bring the perpetrators to justice. So, what India needs is Moral Police, police which offers quick justice to sufferers but certainly not the Moral Policing. Do we?

A Quantum of Racism?

Racism is one of the most important human right struggle of our times but like other much talked about issues this has also become a kind of "buzzword" prominently among the intellectuals, educationalists and media. They all are in the habit of creating an unnecessary hype over it, each time they smell such opportunity.One classic example is the unnecessary hype given to the recent attacks on people of Indian Origin in Oz.It doesn't mean whatever happened in that country is legitimate but were they really the part of dreadful neo-racism as claimed by Indian media and several NGOs, social groups etc., that need to be first verified.Aussies are well known for their kind hospitality all over the globe and Indians have a long history of being their kind guests . All went well for centuries then what happened now? The present economic meltdown combined with the growing number of unemployment among the local youth coupled with the speedily burgeoning Indian community explains a lot. I see these attacks as nothing but the sudden burst of years of anger that kept on accumulating which found its easy target in the form of brown foreigners. Instead of saying these were meant against a "race" I think its better to hold that these were meant against those people who invaded their land wearing white collars and carrying handful of certificates and took away their ways of earnings. Whatever it is but the fact is majority of the Australians didn't comply with this that includes their premiere Kelvin Rudd who shown extreme urgency and ordered the machinery to come harder on the anti social elements.
But before we expect any thing from others shouldn't we look into our own home first, are we clean enough to suggest vacuum cleaner for others. I do not think so. You don't have to turn many pages of history the recent attacks on non Marathis in Maharashtra, high rate of incidents including rape, robbery etc. with foreign tourists, massacre of Christians in Orissa, wide spread casteism in our society etc. are enough to remind us of our own deeds. Each year the number of "white" people attacked in India outnumber the attacks on our "brown" people abroad. Thus, over hyping the issue and putting continuous diplomatic pressure will only harm the nation in long term. We must convey our hard feelings to them but not in the way we are doing, just give their government, people and more importantly their economy more time while simultaneously looking after our own security.The solution lies in the socio cultural mass movement if any significant degree of success is to be achieved.