"What you dancing for, kiddo?"

Nauseous !

That is how I felt when I saw the pictures of the kids jumping around, celebrating the verdict of the Central govt. to allot land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board ! What are they being involved in this for? What do 5 year old kids understand about religious politics, agendas and propagandas ? Why are they so blatantly celebrating the ‘victory’ of ‘Rama’ over ‘Rahim’ ! It just saddens my heart.

Have we descended to such levels wherein we involve our innocent children in fighting for such base and immature causes. I still remember one member of some agitating group in Delhi giving sound bytes to the media that he knew that the bandhs and strikes were causing inconvenience to the public, but then to right a wrong or to fight for a cause, people will have to bear with such inconveniences and make such sacrifices. ‘sacrificies’? boy are you serious … I just shook my head in disgust.

Is this the way we are thinking? Have we lost our sense of reason? I mean which cause is being eschewed here by making millions and millions of people suffer in hunger, thirst, pain and misery? Just to get a few acres of land which does not even belong to any among those protestors?

A few weeks back I had seen a protest on M G Road near Chinnaswamy Stadium. It was being staged by the Pandits (from J&K) and who were in Bangalore. I saw kids and women shouting slogans and holding placards! Why are innocent boys and girls being made a party to such innocuous protests? Is this the learning and education that we are providing our children? And why are we using children to make up the numbers in a protest march?

I wondered while I saw the children dance along with a few elders, with colours of their faces and clothes – Do they even know what they are dancing for and what repercussions it might have on the relations between different sects of people? One of these celebrating children might grow up to become a Hindu fundamentalist bragging about his childhood days’ ‘netagiri’ or one of them might just grow up to become a sensitive individual who is against such narrow mentality. Will they both be able to forget this incident for the rest of their lives?

I don’t think so.