Human Rights can go to hell!

By Aditya Mhatre at 6 March, 2008, 3:10 am

The next round of the boxing match has begun. Not to be left behind by his erstwhile prot�g�, the Shiv Sena patriarch Balasaheb Thackeray has entered the ring too. He says everyone hates Biharis. There are protests against them right from Assam to Bengal to Delhi to Mumbai. So what is it that makes our Bihari brethren so hate worthy?

They are a lot of hardworking people strapped in a state extremely neglected by both the State and Central govt. Once upon a time Bihar (known as Magadha in ancient times) was among the most prosperous places in India. It’s capital Patna (then know as Patliputra) was the centre of first empire built in India i.e. the Nanda dynastya and boosted of all time great warriors like Ashok. Housing the Nalanda and Vikramshila universities, it was among the best education centers of those times. It�s a state celebrated as birthplace of two modern day religions of Budhisim and Jainism. The tenth guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh was born in Patna. Mahatma Gandhi started his freedom movement in India by Satyagraha in the Champaran district of Bihar.

Compare the scenarios from then to what it is today. Years of misrule, caste politics, crime and corruption propagated by political parties have given Bihar the status of one of the least developed states of India. So what are the Biharis expected to do in such a scenario. They are supposed to stay where they are, be poor all their life and lose all the dignity to live just because they belong to a highly misgoverned state. If the Thackeray�s words are to be believed, they have lost the right to a better standard of living.

In our country today, it�s a crime if people want to get out of their wheels of misfortune and make their own good luck out of their sheer hard work. Biharis are ready to travel to long distances, work hard, not rest on their laurels so that they can remove their families back out of a vicious circle of poverty. And so for this crime of theirs they are met with brickbats everywhere they go in this country.

Compare this to the rush Indians make for the US / European visa. Aren�t they too culpable of the same crime? They want to leave their third world country for the lure of a capitalist economy that promises them a better standard of living. Just like Biharis are found in every state in India, Indians are found in every country of the world. Imagine if tomorrow all these countries start beating up Indians and sending them back to India because they think that why should their infrastructure take the burden of Indians just because India cannot provide for them. We have lost our right to raise an eyebrow then.

Some argue that a local�s right to his land is the most and he should be given priority in wake of outsiders. Politics is always fought on this premise. Whether it is Hillary, Obama or the Thackeray�s, they all want to be the messiah of locals or you can say the �voters.� The backlash against outsourcing industry and the working Indians in developed countries is no different than the backlash against a Bihari. The human right of a better livelihood be damned!! The rule that only the fittest can survive be damned!! You can be complacent in your job just because you are a local and you have earned the right for it and you�d better be accustomed to slogging if you are a foreigner.

What goes around comes around. Such is the law of nature. So today if a Bihari in search of a respectable life is thrown out of every state, it may not be far away in future that an Indian is thrown out of every country. Some great man once said, that a man is a human being first, then a national, then a member of s society and then a part of his family. Of course he wasn�t that great after all. Else he would have realised that in practical life its always the opposite. And what greater proof we need of that.

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