THE DAY HUMANITY FAILED...

While India hails the glorious affirmation of the freedom of expression as upholded and further strengthened by the recent decision of the Supreme Court to quash the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act, another parallel incident, close to our neighbourhood hails, both horrendously and shamelessly, what is not 'freedom of expression' but an outright and outrageous 'murder with expression'.

I recently read of the news of the brutal lynching of a 27 year old Afghan woman named Farkhunda for the proposed allegation by the staunchly religious community  of her ostensible burning of the Quran. Yes, we are back again to the old enemy that has been crouching under our beds all these long years, waiting to crawl out the moment we turned the lights off. The barbarious act that led to the open lynching and beating to death and subsequent burning of a woman accused to be blasphemous revealed, in a shameful exposure, the veneration by men of religious fundamentalism over what constitutes the basic essence of human existence: Veneration of life! In a humiliating blow to mankind, barbaric death was upheld as the only just answer to ostensible blasphemy. And what made me almost choke with this feeling of humiliation was the manner in which the expression of public outrage was played out, and was mindlessly recorded.

It was murder. Murder with expression of rage. Murder committed mindlessly.

Mindlessly! A word with close resemblance to another that defies all reason. Rightly said, madness has no direction. Madness has no way. And madness held reigns that ignominious Thursday when an entire mob pounded on a woman in the name of preserving the sanctity of their religion.
Some have "condemned" it, others feel "bitterly conflicted". And then there are some clerics who have even approved it.! 

But then there are others too. I read some women in a unique display of solidarity had stood up for the woman and had insisted on carrying her body to the cemetery...to atleast give her that deserved 'last ritual' that every human being is entitled to from the time they are born!

What will happen ahead, well the newspapers will tell. Or perhaps you will read about it on Facebook.

The future course no one can ascertain.

But what is certain is that a fellow human was murdered. By fellow human beings. In the most disgraceful   manner that would make one shudder with the sheer inhumanity of it all!

Did the woman really burn the Quran? Was she upholding blasphemy? Or was she simply mentally challenged, as some claim?  

You can go ahead, explore the newspapers and our social media as you read this.

You will surely find some matter there.

But what we really need to do is ask ourselves, that fundamental question that would rip all religious fundamentalism down to threads. 

"What have we become"? 

Someone asked a friend once, "what if God was one of us?" And the gibe came, "He would be killed in a bomb blast". As events unfold and humanity rears its ugly head, perhaps we can safely say now that  'If God was one of us, he would be lynched!'

That fateful day, while our ordinary lives went on, somewhere in the world humanity died. And humans saw it all. They did it all!

IS ANYONE LISTENING….?