It's frustrating when you fly halfway across the world to travel, and stupid people fighting over non-issues hold up your plans :( Punjab has been sealed from three sides, and my plans to travel to Himachal have been held up as the situation is too volatile to take a risk. I'm not sure if the ground situation is really that bad - I'm sitting in a cyber cafe in the heart of Ludhiana city right now, and it seems like any normal day. And yet you switch on Star News and they keep repeating some images that would make any normal person believe that Punjab is on fire. I think if the media shuts up for a while, everything will be normal; they're adding fuel to a small fire which is escalating the issue.
Predominantly it is a political issue, because whatever caused the disturbance (the Saccha Sauda Dera chief wearing robes similar to Guru Gobind Singh and administering a ceremony similar to the Amrit ceremony for the Sikhs) has happened a lot of times before. The reason why it didn't have the effect earlier as it had now is probably because no political party could have drawn any political mileage out of it. This time around it was different with different parties at the Centre and the State. It's being potrayed in the media that it's two different parties (the Akali's and the Congress) backing two communities in the dispute (the Sikhs and the Dera followers); whereas it is actually these two parties who are pushing the people to fight (and not just backing them). In fact, the way things stand in Punjab right now, Akali Dal is not even a representative of the Sikhs, but they seem to be giving statements on behalf of the Sikhs enticing people towards violence. And the same's true for the Congress.
I hope the situation does not get worse, because the Congress wants an excuse to dismiss the Akali government, and for that they just have to prove that the conditions are bad enough to put Punjab under President's rule. In fact the Dera followers have been shouting slogans in front of media cameras -"We want President's rule". And most of them aren't even in Punjab - they were standing in the Dera in Haryana!! Makes you wonder whether it's a religious issue or a political one.
Punjab has suffered a lot in the last few decades with violence - the last thing anybody wants here is more bloodshed. Will the political parties realize this and stop instigating violence?
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2 comments:
totally agree.primarily u know, the media needs to shut up.got a call from dad's frnd in bangalore inquiring how things were in chd.. n i had to think for a whole 2 minutes to figure out what in hec he was talkin abt. things aint even that bad.its a friggin media hype, n thats makin things get worse!!
anyway, i see uve been at work!keep at it!!
by the way, i linked u in my blog. easier to read ur posts now!so keep writing
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