Guy Down The Street

In response to: BJP workers burn Aiyar’s effigy, a news item published in Tribune September 10th edition.

So very often we hear of violent crimes, mob attacks and riots. A recent such crime was evident in the Gohana incident. All these violent crimes, especially group crimes stem from the psychology of organized thinking.

Recently, the role of violent movies and video games has come under the scanner. Research has shown that these can have an impact on the violent/non-violent nature of an individual. Under these circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine that our language and our actions can have an impact as well.

Burning an effigy is quite a violent gesture. This gesture is being used to protest against a policy decision. Perhaps, we should make a collective decision to protest in a bit more civilized manner, for example by wearing black ribbons, by signing petitions, by writing satire or by drawing sarcastic caricatures to mock an action.

Finally, as the father of the nation himself said “Hate the sin, not the sinner”, wouldn’t we do well to protest the action, and not burn the actor?

References

1. http://www.psychologymatters.org/mediaviolence.html

Comments

Posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 2:01 pm in politics   |  RSS feed