I am genuinely grateful, as always, for the letters and comments, known in common parlance as “feedback”, from our dear readers. They are precious. Their thoughts are insightful and incisive. Sometimes they are supportive of ideas expressed. Sometimes extremely critical.
I am genuinely grateful, as always, for the letters and comments, known in common parlance as “feedback”, from our dear readers. They are precious. Their thoughts are insightful and incisive. Sometimes they are supportive of ideas expressed. Sometimes extremely critical.
I value them all equally and with utter humility.
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Last week when I wrote about “staying silent” one of our readers, Mihir Kanungo of Kolkata 700001 raised a pertinent question. He asked rhetorically and I fully agree with him, “Can any sane person remain silent without protest when humanity, social values and ethics are being attacked and looted by the clandestine support of politicians and their cohorts? Shouldn’t it be the duty of civil society to roar against this?”
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Yes it is the duty, not just of civil society, but everyone in society, to roar against injustice and to protest. However, I do not believe in patchwork protest, where we, the humanity who is inured to horror, scream and shout when an incident takes place and then go right back to our “normal” lives a few days, weeks, months or at most a year or two later.
I am in search of a holistic cure for social evils. I believe in healing from the root. The last time around I asked you, dear readers, what do you think is the solution to the problems of depravation in society. Not just in this city or country but across the world. I took the question to women and men, young and old. That was the topic of an August 2024 article I wrote: “Tears of the troubled times” and I sincerely searched for, what the roots of evil are and the ways we can we eradicate them.”
I have a well-wisher who happens to be an astute journalist who invariably reads and reacts….often reprimands too…and he sent a Whatsapp text quoting the iconic lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”
Yes, what are we, whether individually or collectively, really doing to root out the evils? There are exceptions. Are you or I one of them? The rot is so deep, it needs deep cleaning.
I will end with the words from Mr Mihir Kanungo’s insightful and incisive letter. He writes, “Until and unless people can properly raise their voice they should not stop.”
And if silence is irony. Let irony speak a thousand words.
The writer is Editor, Features
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