Thursday, 10 January 2013

For Posterity's Sake

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/latehar-encounter-maoists-planted-bomb-inside-jawan-s-body-315642?pfrom=home-lateststories

Disgusting. Two days ago, not more than a few miles from the little missionary hospital I was born in, jawans of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force were left injured for hours in ditches—and as the article suggests, went through some truly gruesome experiences. The only time I've heard about something being close to as barbaric as planting a bomb inside a human is in Bosnia ten years ago, and even by their unsavoury standards, the Naxalites have marked a new low in their approach towards waging war against the Indian state and its agents. What is truly despicable, however, is that it took the state police a full fifteen hours to evacuate the injured to a hospital—only an hour off—in Palamau.
I don't write this with a sense of analysis, or that of exposition of the sorry state of affairs in my home state, but merely so that posterity records my recognition of the forgotten soldier—who is made to live and die in sub-human conditions across vast swathes of jungle in central India, defending the Indian state from a challenge that was created because of years of misrule by those in power. 


This, in conjunction with the brutal assault by the Pakistani Army, has left me deeply despondent, and as a believer in the visceral ability of music to resonate with, and provide succour to our feelings, I take the liberty of posting this song, without in anyway, wishing to undermine the profundity of what has happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bummpWepKWY



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