The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Wednesday 26 December 2012

HUMANS ARE NOT COLLATERAL DAMAGE, MR. NEERAJ KUMAR

When the supreme bosses are showing the way, the followers are bound to follow them dutifully.  

After Manmohan’s insensitive brief on what he thinks about the Delhi gangrape and the subsequent public outrage and after Mr. Shinde comparing young protesters with Maoists, it was turn of their yet another ardent follower (in delivering verbal volleys - and they are plentiful), Delhi’s police commissioner, Mr. Neeraj Kumar. Please excuse me if I am exaggerating.

In the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape protests, one thing is crystal clear that had it not been the huge public outcry on the streets, we would never have seen whatever developments have been so far in the case given the kind of blind leads the case had thrown initially.

And the fact that the crime itself owes its origin to some glaring lapses by the police slaps Delhi Police squarely in the face. These lapses are always there but whenever the criminal elements exploit them to perpetrate some inhuman crime like the Delhi gangrape, the issue comes to the forefront.


Some years ago, a female journalist driving back to her home from work post-midnight was shot dead by some rogues for apparently no reason. That was a South Delhi area. There was much hue and cry. Some measures were taken only to go slack once the cry was over. Last year, a girl was shot dead in broad daylight by a jilted lover in Southwest Delhi. The blind case was solved after much public and media outrage and some tough remedy was ‘proposed’.

The police have lost its character of being the people’s saviour first. Cracking these blind cases tells us police can solve most of the cases and prevent crime much more efficiently. But the increasing crime graph tells us they are not willing (of course, for variety of reasons!).

So when there is outcry and outrage, it does as much so as to save its skin.

The way the Delhi police commissioner has handled the issue since the very beginning only confirms the insensitive and inhuman character of the police.

It also represents (once again) the colonial mindset with which the high-ranked administrative officers work. There have been debates and commissions to overhaul the selection and training process of the Indian Administrative Services but nothing on the ground has been done.

These officers, in collaboration with their bosses, run the country. So much depends on them. Mr. Neeraj Kumar is just one among many of them we saw it in this case, and we are still observing the ugly blame game, be the law and order maintenance or the death of the injured Delhi Police constable.

He could have been right in his ‘sense’ when he said it was not feasible to check every bus in Delhi but he probably didn’t do his homework. The bus was chartered with a school, was plying on a school holiday, had circled the same area twice and the accused had attacked others before picking up the young couple. Also, the police had ignored the complainants about these ‘other attacks’. Also, it was just the 8-10 PM time-slot when it all happened.

When these lapses were the major reasons behind the brutal attack and gangrape, Mr. Kumar should have accepted the shortcomings with grace cracking down on the errant and careless cops. But, he, instead, chose to play insensitive, like the character of the Indian police has become. Action on errant cops after a week of the incident only bolstered the claim that the police was acting indifferent and the sacking was result of the mounting public protest.

And then, he, in his profound wisdom, came up with yet another remark that can comfortably put him in the league of people with dictatorially insensitive mindset.

He equated injured protesters by his Force’s barbaric act as collateral damage. (Mr. Shinde, do you see in him the next home minister of the country?) His statement came midst increasing protests and increasingly barbaric police acts to suppress the voices.

The CNN-IBN report said him quoting: ('If sacking the police commissioner improves safety for women, do it every day – December 24, 2012)

“Pointing that "in a crackdown, there is always collateral damage", Neeraj Kumar hit out at the media, accusing it of fuelling the violence on Sunday, adding that the police had "not mishandled the situation". If an innocent person has come to harm, I apologise. I feel sorry for that. But I do not apologise for what the police did there, he further said.”*

Mr. Kumar, you are an IPS officer and I might be wrong in writing here owing to my poor knowledge of affairs, but it again puts your whole persona in negative light. No one is going for your intent here. That cannot be the case in the highly charged atmosphere of protests. What matters first is how sensitive you sound. And you have sounded totally insensitive in managing this affair. What sort of sincere effort can we expect from you and your police force in the long run then?

This unrest and the public outcry is a direct result of insensitivity of the police administration and the political machinery. The protests were ignored first. No one of the governing machinery took it seriously thinking it would die down. When it grew, they were not prepared. And since, they have been a most insensitive, elitist lot, they, in their arrogance, chose to crush it down, not learning any lessons from the self-erupted massive public protests of 2011.

‘Humans as collateral damage’ has been mostly used in the context of wars and civil wars and terrorism, and certainly there wasn’t any remote possibility of that happening during the Delhi protests. It is not just the lumpen and mob elements that are to be blamed for the violence that injured many and took life of one Delhi Police constable, but, you, your police force and your political bosses, too, are equally responsible.

Also, please, stop making death of the police constable an issue to settle scores with the Delhi government and Sheila Dikshit.

Mr. Commissioner of Police, your concept of ‘humans as collateral damage’ is misplaced and against the spirit of democracy. And people like you and your political bosses are given charge to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

Indian democracy is still half-baked; it still has many mob traits. But that doesn’t allow anyone to treat the Indian public (and the voters) as collateral damage. On the contrary, it is true that the political bosses and the administrative machinery have been doing that regularly.

The wrong notion might well be on the way of the forced-correction mode, growing public protests on issues of public concern is a testimony to it.

Mr. Kumar, you, your police force, and your political bosses - do you realize that?

* (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/if-sacking-police-commissioner-improves-safety-of-women-do-it-every-day-neeraj-kumar/312117-3-244.html)

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/