TAKING OFF OUR BLINKERS





















“The best way to get a bad law repealed
is to enforce it strictly.”

– Abraham Lincoln


My wife and I watch dozens of videos and, of course, get tutored in the famed WhatsApp University, willy-nilly. Gone are the days when we proudly claimed, “We don’t watch TV at home (Which simply meant ‘We are a different – an evolved – breed’). Hello, no one needs that Idiot Box in homes, anymore… Everything – every piece of junk – is there on our little mobile-screens… and, we know it, very well, that it’s there 24/7/365… and, it’s there not just confined to our drawing rooms or bedrooms!


So, despite having been tutored by those million tutorials, I was still unable to get a proper lesson on what are these NRC and CAB all about. Like the rest of my fellow citizens, I love my country and the privilege of democracy it brings along. I know I should be informed enough about the laws passed in our Parliament… For, they affect our very existence. All laws are not necessarily good laws. There are bad ones, too. And, as citizens, if we do not learn to distinguish between them, voice our dissent when we ought to, I think, we do more harm to our nation and its democracy than those who make laws with bad intentions.


Seriously, I feel this: to really learn to distinguish between bad laws and good laws, we need to first stop positioning ourselves on the sides of the government or the opposition. We need to be apolitical and see the reality as it is. For that, our senses should not be dead… Logic should not be clouded… and, above all, our hearts should not be bereft of compassion.


“What are these NRC and CAB all about?” My wife asked me, this afternoon. For a while, I tried to explain to her. But, I quickly realized, that my knowledge on the subject was either insufficient or clouded. So, I stopped giving her ghyan. “You watch a hundred videos a day (like me!)” I said to her irritated, “So, why can’t you find the answers for yourself?”


A law is bad for you and me, mostly, if it directly affects us. Else, why bother so much?... That’s how it is; right?


The right to life… The light to liberty… The right to peacefully protest… The right to dissent… The right to equality… Never ever to distinguish on the basis of our religions! Oh, that great beauty and power of democracy!


I only pray to God, never to let my senses die, logic to get clouded and heart to become a stone.


Governments come and governments go. But, our democracy, I hope, will live un-tampered.


Therefore, let’s not react taking sides of the government or the opposition. They are there only as our representatives… Yes, as Abe Lincoln famously said, to ensure that our democracy is, indeed, ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’…
Let’s listen to this man as ordinary citizens… taking off our blinkers, for a while.





GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: pixabay.com

Video: The Quint

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