A new ray of hope

The young men and women who raised their voices against the brutal gang rape in Delhi are stunned. They find it hard to believe how the most cruel person among the six will be out of jail after three months just because he is said to be a juvenile. These youths ask me, how can there be such a law which questions the age of a rapist and a killer, and choses to turn a blind eye to his cruel and heinous crime.

These were the very young men and women, who came out on the roads to demand justice for the girl, whom they even didn't know. These youths never saw her face, only saw and heard about the gruesome incident, on television and went  out to stage protests at Jantar Mantar and India Gate.

These protesters had no organisation worth the name, no leader, no religion, no political ideology, and yet, they came out on the roads, facing police lathicharge, drenching themselves before water cannons, facing teargas shells, and yet they stood their ground.

Their protests had an electrifying effect on the nation. Even the Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir after seeing the scale of protests remarked he should have been at India Gate with the protesters, but was bound by the restraints of his constitutional post.

The former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Verma has also stated in his Committee's report how the youths showed him the way forward. These are the very young men and women, about whom we used to say that they do not care for the society, and that they care only about themselves.

These are the same very youths about whom it used to be often said that they don't even go to cast their votes during elections. These are the very youths whom we advise almost daily to concentrate on their studies, focus on their careers and stop worrying about society.

We tell them, do whatever you can, this system is not going to change, 'sab chalta hai', we tell them, first build your careers and then think about the nation. Had these youths listened to our advices, from where could have such a ray of hope emerged?

We try to shield our youths from all problems,  we do not let the police remotely touch them, leave alone facing lathis. We advise the youths never to get embroiled with the police, and stay away from the law enforcers and the law courts. Had these young men and women listened to us and continued to fear the police, from where would have hope emerged?

But our government was trying to find a political conspiracy behind all this. The Home Minister was more concerned with the prestige of the government, had the young men and women entered Rashtrapati Bhavan. Mr Shinde was concerned about the loss of prestige to India,  had the Russian President Putin saw our youths protesting at India Gate. 

I have seen top-notch leaders making fun of these youths, saying, "look, they don't know even how to shout slogans, thse guys are shouting 'We want justice', don't they even know that justice is found in courts, what's the use of shouting on the roads."

The movers and shakers of society were saying, "burning candles won't solve problems", they were blaming the TV channels for highlighting the outrage among youths. Some of them even commented that if the TV cameras were shut off, nobody would know what's happening. 

Just imagine: if we had withdrawn our TV cameras, and our reporters were cowered down with water cannons and lathis, what a greater sin it would have been.  The nation wouldn't have known that the same very youths, whom we used to blame as self-centred and worthless, were showing us the way. 

These youths were awakening our leaders, our judges, our lawyers, almost everybody, and we should be thankful to these young men and women. These youths have opened our eyes.

The truth is that we do not even understand our own young men and women.  We don't even discuss the state of our nation and society with them, we don't  discuss burning issues of rape and corruption with them.  

We rather fear that if we discuss all such issues with them, they will be perturbed, so better stay silent. 

But we now know, that our youths  will know everything through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  They have cellphones with them, laptops in their bags, and we should not remain under the illusion that these youths do not know what's happening around.

Even though we create a maze of walls around them, they manage to know the truth. We should rather welcome this as a celebration of awakening. 

We should give more power to our youths, we should stand with them in their fight, we should convince them that our trust in the youths have risen.

This trust will be further strengthened when a judge will give the verdict that age will not be a hindrance in giving punishment to a murderous rapist.

The trust of young men and women in the system will rise when the President will promise that no rapist or killer will get clemency from him.

These youths will stand with us stoutly when the government will convince them that 'netagiri' (playing to the gallery) will not be an obstacle on the road to justice. 

These young men and women await a dawn, when they would not be stopped from gathering at India Gate, they await a system where ministers and chief ministers would go to them to listen to their grievances.

I believe the next elections will notably mark the growing presence and domination of the young generation. This will be the ultimate guarantee for the safety of our democracy.