Kerala has just undergone the worst floods in its recent history. Having a Kerala origin, one was quite seriously tracking the situation on both conventional and social media, apart from making regular calls to the caretaker at my wife's ancestral house - the BSNL landline installed there fortunately functioned perfectly during the ordeal.
Positive stories abounded - the three thousand odd fishermen who came on their own with their boats from less affected districts to rescue stranded people, the armed forces who worked incessantly over land, water and air to help the affected, the community spirit in people banding together to distribute relief material and to clean the houses of their neighbours once the waters receded, civil administration and locals working as one single team, the media working quickly and decisively with the authorities not only to direct efforts but also to squash rumours. All this made for very pleasant hearing and viewing.
In India, Kerala is peculiar in that three major religions are practised by significant numbers of its citizens. As per the 2011 Census, Hindus constitute 55%, while those professing Islam are 28% and Christians are about 17% of the total populace. Though politics is often fractious and the people are generally articulate and argumentative, there is not much inter-religion strife prevalent. This feeling of harmony came to the fore during the crisis.
What stuck out like a sore thumb, however, were the noticeable number of posts on social media attributing the causes of the flood to divine causes or to eating habits, instead of just excessive rainfall. I, for one, cannot understand the psychology of a person or a group who gloats at another's misfortune or worse, propagates that help should be rendered only to select groups. Here again the gratifying part was that the more sensible elements in traditional as well as social media helped to isolate and squash such diseased minds.
However, for me, the more worrying part of such hate is its presence at all - that too from well educated and qualified people. While it sounds very nice to repeat the words of an old Hindi song 'prem ki Ganga bahate chalo' (help spread love as wide as the Ganga), would it suffice to change these choleric souls? I wonder.
Maybe the easiest action one can take is to try to reform such elements with whom one comes in contact and if that fails, excise them from your life.
Positive stories abounded - the three thousand odd fishermen who came on their own with their boats from less affected districts to rescue stranded people, the armed forces who worked incessantly over land, water and air to help the affected, the community spirit in people banding together to distribute relief material and to clean the houses of their neighbours once the waters receded, civil administration and locals working as one single team, the media working quickly and decisively with the authorities not only to direct efforts but also to squash rumours. All this made for very pleasant hearing and viewing.
In India, Kerala is peculiar in that three major religions are practised by significant numbers of its citizens. As per the 2011 Census, Hindus constitute 55%, while those professing Islam are 28% and Christians are about 17% of the total populace. Though politics is often fractious and the people are generally articulate and argumentative, there is not much inter-religion strife prevalent. This feeling of harmony came to the fore during the crisis.
What stuck out like a sore thumb, however, were the noticeable number of posts on social media attributing the causes of the flood to divine causes or to eating habits, instead of just excessive rainfall. I, for one, cannot understand the psychology of a person or a group who gloats at another's misfortune or worse, propagates that help should be rendered only to select groups. Here again the gratifying part was that the more sensible elements in traditional as well as social media helped to isolate and squash such diseased minds.
However, for me, the more worrying part of such hate is its presence at all - that too from well educated and qualified people. While it sounds very nice to repeat the words of an old Hindi song 'prem ki Ganga bahate chalo' (help spread love as wide as the Ganga), would it suffice to change these choleric souls? I wonder.
Maybe the easiest action one can take is to try to reform such elements with whom one comes in contact and if that fails, excise them from your life.
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Those specific groups or people have became so insensitive that natural disasters like flood seems like a mean agenda to them.
ReplyDeleteAgree totally and that's what worries me. Thanks for reading
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