The following is a copy of my post on LinkedIn today after I read some people actually defending the rapists & murderers ‘Brahmins with sanskaar’.
You may read the original here.
We want to ban & boycott films & books and garland and felicitate convicted rapists & murderers. And this is supposedly done to win an election. Which means this is exactly what people vote for. People who, I presume, are not me, because this would actually have the opposite result on my voting preference. But it does seem there are more ‘not-mes’ than there are ‘mes’. There are more people who’d vote for a party that proudly identifies with rape and murder than there are who would be disgusted by it. How many more? Enough to win an election, I guess. And that, my friends, boggles my mind to no end. Have we all gone mad? Or am I the one who is mad and everyone else is in control of their senses? I can’t tell anymore. Perhaps it is I who needs to be committed to a mental asylum.
On LinkedIn, a professional networking platform, I find it hard to believe that there are people here on my network who I collaborate with and either work with now, or have in the past, or potentially see as collaborators in the future, who will vote for a party that has not only freed these convicted rapists and murderers but will actually vote for this party because they have freed these animals. I find it hard to believe that we citizens of LinkedIn: the well-educated, the well-travelled, the well-read, the well-connected, the privileged, the top 1% of this nation, harbour amongst us people who sincerely believe that releasing Bilkis Bano’s rapists and the murderers of her family during an election year on our independence day to mark 75 years of freedom from slavery and oppression is something that will attract them to the party that is responsible for this and will cause them to tilt their voting preferences towards this party.
I find it hard to reconcile this with my general opinion of thinking, educated, social media savvy people who populate this platform.
Please tell me I am wrong in judging my friends and acquaintances, my alliance partners and collaborators, my vendors and customers, my employees and investors, my connections and influencers on LinkedIn and that there seems to be some mistake. That this is a nightmare that will end soon. That I am imagining things.
Please tell me we have not become the animals that we evolved from so painfully so long ago. That we are civilised, evolved, empathetic homo sapiens: thinking people. Please restore my faith in humanity.
