Banish violence, embrace peace

I write this as news is still coming in about the tragic killings in Jammu of innocent people by suicide terrorists. And I wonder -- will this madness never end? Already, the media seems to have exhausted its lexicon of words to describe acts of such senseless violence -- dastardly, deadliest, bloodiest, are words that have been so overused that they have lost their impact, and almost roll off the TV anchor’s tongue like the weather report.
And we too, what about us? Hasn’t it become more or less a daily occurrence to hear or read about one more senseless killing? Haven’t our reactions too become more or less predictable? The first hearing of the tragedy: the constriction at the pit of our chests, the slight hysteria brimming in our throats, the collecting of our thoughts -- it’s sad, but thank God it was not me and mine.And then the considered opinion. How many times in the last few months have we been through the motions?
But the point is that the aggregate of all these acts of violence is that the theatre of death moves one step closer to us day by day. And before we know it, it will be on us like a shroud. If terrorists can slip through the borders, if communalists can inflame Gujarat, if gangsters can make Mumbai’s streets resemble Chicago in its kill- and-tell days, then we are inching our way steadily, determinedly in to a state of terror, violence bloodshed, mayhem.
And perhaps, there will be nobody left to ask -- how many deaths will it take to realise that too may people have died? Perhaps there will be no time to ask those questions, as we pick up the broken pieces or firefight or trouble-shoot. No, the time to ask those questions is only now. But of whom else can we ask them but ourselves?
The only thing that will bring India back from the brink of the abyss is if we, each one of us individually, privately, and personally practice non-violence. And recognise and banish violence from our lives in every form it exists.
Violence does not only exist in the barrel of a gun. Violence lurks in a destructive thought, be it of anger, jealousy, greed, prejudice or hatred. If we could only eschew the tendency to indulge in such thoughts. Anyone with sensitivity will recognise that even as those denizens of Mumbai society plead for peace on the borders of this country, they harbour some of the most hostile and destructive thoughts for others in their own hearts. And Mumbai parties are the most violent theaters of war, where of course, words, deeds are used instead of guns and bombs. If we can in our daily lives still the instinct for destruction of other people’s lives then perhaps we will be in a small way slowing the process of hurtling towards an era of endless and senseless bloodshed.
Governments can do little to turn back the clock once a nation is skittering towards destruction as we have witnessed many times over through history’s lessons. Violence begets violence; every act of destruction has a natural reaction in another of retaliation. Yesterday, it was the killing of innocent men and women in Jammu. I shudder to think what the reaction to that will be -- and the chain of events that follow.
No, as the serpent of violence inches towards us, getting closer every minute, the only thing we can do is to consciously and determinedly uphold the antidote to those negative forces.