Delhi may be picking up the pieces after a manic bout of violence but its children have been damaged forever

No matter how determinedly we pick up the pieces, we have failed our children by exposing them to Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades and numbing their potential forever. For all the happiness curriculum that has been the showpiece of the city’s schools as inculcating a holistic and value consciousness among them, it has taken mad fury and hate politics to demolish it in one go. We have ended up forcing a moral crisis upon them, one that we have implanted in their minds by attacking them in their homes, their schools and their playgrounds, stripping them of every comfort zone and emotion, leaving them unchaperoned and fearful in a world of adult mess. What do the visuals of the child, distraught and slumping over a father’s body, dead because he was hit by a wayward bullet, tell us? How do we tell students, who have grown up knowing that every school exam would take them closer to a better life, that they cannot attend school in the first place? Spare a thought for the boy who got hit by a stone while returning home after completing an exam, who doesn’t know when the next test schedule would be announced and finds it difficult to study in a home that is in sixes and sevens overnight. The violence outside scares him further into a ghetto of fear. Tuition and coaching classes aren’t safe, too, considering that a boy was shot at while returning from one at Jafrabad on February 25. He could have been saved but he did not get any medical aid or even an ambulance. Imagine the plight of board examinees, who are awaiting alternative dates and venues to clear the first crucial hurdle of student life, qualifying for a higher education. The Delhi High Court has asked the Government to sanitise convenient exam centres that aren’t too far away for students and announce new dates so that their anxieties are taken care of. Yet if the mangled fans and the trail of destruction at schools are any indication, then knowledge is a futile asset in a society which has found new qualifiers for a settled, peaceful life — religion, identity and conformity with a greater cause. Arun Modern Public School principal Jyoti Rani said that she had students of all communities. Now the riots have made them conscious of where they come from. Answer sheets of exams already conducted have been destroyed as have books and computers. Students had been locked up in another school, an inhuman confinement, like lambs to the slaughter. And when men in uniform, that could have been borrowed, stolen or even original, codify a simple citizenship test, on whether you can publicly sing the anthem or chant Vande Mataram or not, then you are telling the young to forget history lessons and learn the new safety bar codes. The divisive politics of the times have propagated a relearning of life as it should be and is turning our children into hunter-survivors than evolved humans. With families fleeing for good, some children will never return and will have to deal with displacement. The rioters have successfully created a deep disturbia to be inhabited by new citizens, who have already been infected and hardened at birth as children of conflict. That explains why so many teenagers were among the arsonists, carrying cricket bats and rods. When prejudice becomes political capital and children are denied their innocence, it is shuddering to think what we are bequeathing as civil society.

It takes no rocket science to understand how children and adolescents exposed to communal violence are deformed in the mind. Studies worldwide have found this group susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insecurity, faithlessness, fear, withdrawal and denial, all manifested through physical symptoms like repeated bouts of headaches and stomach aches. With all that they knew gone, the dulling emptiness is often frighteningly filled by memories of the past that will seek closure and result in either revenge or retaliation.  The worst injustice we do to children, therefore, is by not punishing the perpetrators of violence. While the Government has detained and demonised protesters and dissenters, there has been no outrage over or action taken against its sympathisers and loyalists, who unleash their worst selves knowing they have the insurance cover as ideological warriors. The dossiers of the marauders at Jamia Millia and Jawaharlal Nehru University are common knowledge. Even their faces are known. But they roam free. In the darkest hour of this city, happiness has lost. And childhood has died.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Delhi may be picking up the pieces after a manic bout of violence but its children have been damaged forever

No matter how determinedly we pick up the pieces, we have failed our children by exposing them to Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades and numbing their potential forever. For all the happiness curriculum that has been the showpiece of the city’s schools as inculcating a holistic and value consciousness among them, it has taken mad fury and hate politics to demolish it in one go. We have ended up forcing a moral crisis upon them, one that we have implanted in their minds by attacking them in their homes, their schools and their playgrounds, stripping them of every comfort zone and emotion, leaving them unchaperoned and fearful in a world of adult mess. What do the visuals of the child, distraught and slumping over a father’s body, dead because he was hit by a wayward bullet, tell us? How do we tell students, who have grown up knowing that every school exam would take them closer to a better life, that they cannot attend school in the first place? Spare a thought for the boy who got hit by a stone while returning home after completing an exam, who doesn’t know when the next test schedule would be announced and finds it difficult to study in a home that is in sixes and sevens overnight. The violence outside scares him further into a ghetto of fear. Tuition and coaching classes aren’t safe, too, considering that a boy was shot at while returning from one at Jafrabad on February 25. He could have been saved but he did not get any medical aid or even an ambulance. Imagine the plight of board examinees, who are awaiting alternative dates and venues to clear the first crucial hurdle of student life, qualifying for a higher education. The Delhi High Court has asked the Government to sanitise convenient exam centres that aren’t too far away for students and announce new dates so that their anxieties are taken care of. Yet if the mangled fans and the trail of destruction at schools are any indication, then knowledge is a futile asset in a society which has found new qualifiers for a settled, peaceful life — religion, identity and conformity with a greater cause. Arun Modern Public School principal Jyoti Rani said that she had students of all communities. Now the riots have made them conscious of where they come from. Answer sheets of exams already conducted have been destroyed as have books and computers. Students had been locked up in another school, an inhuman confinement, like lambs to the slaughter. And when men in uniform, that could have been borrowed, stolen or even original, codify a simple citizenship test, on whether you can publicly sing the anthem or chant Vande Mataram or not, then you are telling the young to forget history lessons and learn the new safety bar codes. The divisive politics of the times have propagated a relearning of life as it should be and is turning our children into hunter-survivors than evolved humans. With families fleeing for good, some children will never return and will have to deal with displacement. The rioters have successfully created a deep disturbia to be inhabited by new citizens, who have already been infected and hardened at birth as children of conflict. That explains why so many teenagers were among the arsonists, carrying cricket bats and rods. When prejudice becomes political capital and children are denied their innocence, it is shuddering to think what we are bequeathing as civil society.

It takes no rocket science to understand how children and adolescents exposed to communal violence are deformed in the mind. Studies worldwide have found this group susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insecurity, faithlessness, fear, withdrawal and denial, all manifested through physical symptoms like repeated bouts of headaches and stomach aches. With all that they knew gone, the dulling emptiness is often frighteningly filled by memories of the past that will seek closure and result in either revenge or retaliation.  The worst injustice we do to children, therefore, is by not punishing the perpetrators of violence. While the Government has detained and demonised protesters and dissenters, there has been no outrage over or action taken against its sympathisers and loyalists, who unleash their worst selves knowing they have the insurance cover as ideological warriors. The dossiers of the marauders at Jamia Millia and Jawaharlal Nehru University are common knowledge. Even their faces are known. But they roam free. In the darkest hour of this city, happiness has lost. And childhood has died.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)