Make the New Year happy

Dear Editor,
“Happy New Year” is perhaps the most repeated wish uttered/written all around the society and which would continue till at least a fortnight!
Without disrespecting the sentiments attached with this greeting, it can also be safely asked: would just mere utterance of it ensure happiness from the very first dawn of the new year? Rather, we should all go all-out to make the new year and the society happy by undertaking concrete steps.
Not only should we try to take good care of the person in ourselves and remain true to our respective profession, delivering our honest best, we should also provide justice to our conscience if our wish of a happy new year is serious enough.
As Martin Luther King Jr said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If X is rendered injustice, protest should be registered not only in terms of morality but also for selfish reasons. Because if X gets tortured and no protest gets registered, the next day Y would be persecuted and if it, too, remains unprotested, then that fang of torture is sure to strike myself also in the near future.
Today, almost the whole country has erupted in anger following the insecurity posed by the NRC and the CAA. But why didn’t the rest of India protest en masse when a particular state got divided overnight on an absolute unilateral basis with all the special protection provided to it according to the provision of the constitution taken away? Why didn’t we care to even appreciate the pain of such insulted hearts? Instead, the majority went gaga in the name of ‘national interest’! Were the people of the geographically, physically, psychologically affected state not part of the nation? Was their interest not our interest also? Can the interest of a nation be served by overlooking the interest of a section of the people of that very nation? Just like millions of tiny droplets make an ocean, millions of individuals form a nation, and so psychological assault on a single individual is also a direct assault upon the nation. Our conscience demands that, irrespective of the class or community of the victim (be he/she a single individual or a group of people), protest against injustice should be our urgent goal of life.
Just because I am ‘safe’ or ‘not affected’, it does not mean that I would remain indifferent to the tragedy of hundreds who passed away prematurely in bank queues while trying to deposit or withdraw their own money, or the vulnerability of the millions of wage-earners who lost their jobs in the wake of demonetization. Can a mere piece of document be allowed a higher place in society by overriding the highest truth of humanity? If not, then how can we afford to remain indifferent to innumerable persons already languishing in Assam jails just because they could not produce certain documents, and lakhs of others set to be moved into detention centres? Or take the case of the Rohingyas. Why can’t we see our own children on the faces of the Rohingya children who are witnessing hell under the god’s sky along with their kith and kin? Why can’t we realize that had destiny played its cards otherwise, we ourselves could have taken birth as Rohingyas?
Real happiness can be achieved in the society only if we try to feel a bit of sympathy and empathy in our souls for our fellow human beings. This will obviously lead to protests against injustice and torture, which will also put to end such ills, thereby leading to a truly happy society where all days appear new, enriching and worth living for.
Yours sincerely,
Kajal Chatterjee