Dear Editor,
We know we live in an era where some people are hacked up with their lives, while on the other hand some seem to be enjoying luxury, and at the same time some are struggling to cope up with time and space available.
Moreover, Arunachalees are sort of blessed ones on earth, who have all the luxury in and around us. The only thing is that we need to be a bit more vigilant and smart enough to flow with the passing time and adjust with the squeezing space. The world is merely a small family. And if one understands, it in a better way, the good is for him. But no one seems to be quenching for that little amount of good. We are all so busy in our own made up world, where I am the only one living and ruling myself. And that is what is being misinterpreted in our minds by us.
The fact of the matter is that we only want to retaliate against an attack. Nobody seems to be taking things in a positive way, where things could have been better understood. More so, violence and destructions are being invoked day by day, knowing the fact that we are the ones going to be the ultimate losers. And so, knowingly unknowingly we are creating an unstable situation for ourselves. We have somehow from somewhere unknown have made Bandh as our culture. It’s like; only calling out Bandhs & protests will we achieve our sets of goals. No doubt, bandhs are required sometimes to get things right. But how do we call out bandhs and at what cost? Are we to destroy lives and properties? For that matter, do we really understand the meaning of protest or bandhs? Is violence and destruction our main Agenda or Objective? How do we get to a proper consent through this? What about the properties that we destroy in the name of bandh or protest? Are they not our own properties? We go and destroy public buses, vehicles and vandalize govt. offices that are meant for our aid.
Say for instance, a particular area has called out bandh, and have destroyed all public buses and vehicles that ply for the public’s conveniences of that particular area. There are so many other people who rely on daily wage system of work to feed their loved ones and use the daily public transport system to reach their work places. Are you, the ones who call out the bandh, going to remunerate these laborers? Don’t get carried away by the false notion of an idea. There is always a way out to tackle things and situation before we get to the worse hang of it. We live in a place where we are so blessed with the natural beauty and mesmerizing diverse culture. We have the ability to transcend our potential and work for peace and harmony to prevail in our state. We need to be living in communion with God and love each other as we love ourselves.
Therefore, this culture of bandhs and protest should not be hampering our peaceful existence. I am not against Bandh Calls, but am certainly not in favor of the way this process is being carried out. We need to be abiding by the law for such activities. We have no right to destroy things to meet our endless goals. And at the same time, we need to readdress ourselves that we are calling out such bandhs/protests for a cause and not for destruction and violence. Moreover, destruction and violence will only inculcate inhuman values in our culture and society at large. And this is not our culture that we would like to show to the people out there. We the people of the hill are by nature peaceful and loving. But the external forces have influenced our culture greatly. And this is not supposed to be a good gesture my dear people of the hill.
Therefore, to conclude I would like appeal to my dear people of the hill that lets unite together and work for progress. Let’s leave behind all our indifferences and live in love, peace and harmony with each other.
Yours,
Poilong Chithan,
Goa