On August 27, 2006, a professor in an Ujjain college was beaten to death by his students because he and his colleagues cancelled student elections. That's the worth of a life - it can be traded for a student election. Five or six decades of a life spent learning, loving, teaching, being a father, a son, a sibling, a professor, a friend - all snuffed out for what? A student election. What does it say for us that we can kill - KILL - a man who teaches us? This is the land where "gurus" are worshipped.
The police stood in plain public and TV camera view and WATCHED as one "student" threatened his professors, then abused them, and manhandled them. The professor who collapsed and later died had undergone a bypass surgery a few days before this incident. Life is that cheap. TV makes it even cheaper. The professor died in front of TV cameras. Millions of people saw him take his last gasping death.
What, I wonder, went through that poor man's mind as he watched his wards morph into beasts; his heart obviously couldn't take it.
Incidents like these that revolt people like me also happen because of people like me - we the silent self-righteous "dignified" majority who blog but will leave it to others "less dignified" to take to the streets and protest and bay for the beasts' blood and keep baying till we see it. Unless we stop accepting these atrocities collectively, ordinary men will continue to kill other ordinary men.
That's scary for all of us - the thought that not a bomb, not a terrorist, not a murder, but your next door neighbour can snuff your life out if you simply disagree with him. It can happen to me...and to you.
