When Man vs. Wild heralded the death of life and conscience…
The killing of a pregnant elephant with firecrackers planted in the fruit it consumed, in Kerala’s Palakkad district, awakened the collective conscience of millions worldwide last week. Ever since the episode we have had dormant social media accounts of celebrities going hyper-active; common janta who up until then had not awakened their inner human now angrily stating how the perpetrators of the crime deserved an equal punishment. A minority sat to lament the death of the human race. I sat there musing on the different aspects of the episode that had unfortunately gone unnoticed. But before I get to that a little bit on the other side of this story.
While one half of social media went berserk over the incident itself, a few motivated opportunists took to blaming the Muslim community for the death of the elephant. Suddenly, a case of the recklessness of humanity was now a case of outrage over a community’s participation in the death of two innocent animals (the baby elephant as much an entity as it’s mother.)
Never in the history of wildlife conservation, had I read about a communal dissonance over the termination of a life that did not even subscribe to such beliefs. The question is where are we headed as a society? What was required was a unanimous condemnation of the bestiality. What came off was a bifurcation of humans on the basis of a sub type: their religion. No human who willfully propagates the dis-integration of the human race must even have a say in such matters. And yet here they were, talking about the brutality of one human while carefully brainwashing people to ponder on the underpinnings of such an argument that only “one” community in the country was capable of such.
To put it black and white: No human who takes away the life of man or beast can ever be labelled as a human, much less a religiously inspired one.
But that wasn’t the end. Things took another nasty turn when politicians decided to indulge in mud-slinging against opponents who didn’t have much of a role to play in the entire scenario. The death of the elephant has been approached in the same way the migrant workers were dealt with —with utter apathy. With a view to scoring a political brownie, people sold their conscience cheaply in the bazaars of indifference.
And then we hit rock-bottom when someone asked, does it take a medical condition like pregnancy for the death of a human or beast to invite this rancour? Would you, dear reader want to answer such a question at all?
Whether it was a pregnant elephant, the pregnant Safoora who is languishing in jail or the hundreds she represents; whether it is the death of a migrant worker whose life left him while he trudged the sands of time or a COVID patient who finally died a lonely death, each of them was a version of LIFE; a life that wasn’t given to them by society or politics, but demanded respect equally.
While you sit and ponder on how the lock-down is revealing the many appalling shades of mankind, I request you to think on all aspects of any piece of “breaking news” before you comment sans misplaced political emotions at play. For it is only when humanity wakes up from it’s deep slumber that we can cherish all versions and forms of life itself rather than indulging in selective outrage, for each life is equally precious.
Until then all we have is an investigation that is yet to unfold completely…
