“The pen is mightier than the
sword”
Edward. G. Bulwer-Lytton
Right from the beginning of our
existence on the earth, our parents have taught us to be honest, peace-loving,
social beings. We grew up thinking, that
the world is filled with people who think and act like we were asked to. But as
reality syndrome struck us, we realized that what we knew is only partially
correct. While there is no dearth of compassion, but a huge part of the society
is engulfed by dogmatism and aversion. The realization was hard hitting to the
childish hearts. But again we took the shock and the cruel blows of bigotry
with hope that this extremism has to end.
Someday, Sometime! But that time never came. The wait never ceased to
exist! Yet we maintained composure, afterall violence cannot kill violence, it
can only instigate more, making the extremists invincible. They curbed women
powers, they curbed general safety and much more, but now they want to curb our
basic right, the right to voice our thoughts. Is it acceptable? No!
While in India the
recent nullification of Section 66A of
the amended Information Technology Act,
2000 was done to prevent the reining of vocal and expressional independence,
our neighboring nation has become a threat to the ones with independent
thinking. They say the pen is mightier
than the sword but in Bangladesh the increasing toll of hacking bloggers
and writers to death speaks a different story. The cruel machete slaying the independent
thinkers to pieces, takes the whole world by shock. With the recent incidents
of religious extremists killing Arijit Roy,
an US based writer and blogger and Washiqur Rahman a young Bangladeshi blogger has left the world and especially the
world of bloggers in whammy.
We say we are progressive,
but where is the progressive thinking? I don’t want to judge the correctness of
the religious beliefs that the extremists conceive, actually I don’t care. But
how can they snatch the right to speak from the ones who dare to think
differently. Each and every human has the right to choose his belief, which
comes from his outlook and experience. That can never and ever be enforced. And
no one has the right to! A country if deprived of vocal rights, is a dumb
country in every respect and growth is never a possibility in such a scenario. As
development comes with enlightenment and enlightenment comes with education and
with education people tend to become opinionated. Besides a nation like that is
like a grenade, with the seething desire to express burning in its core, and
when it explodes it reduces everything around to ashes.
So if the extremists and their
extreme ways continue, hundreds of Arijits and Washiqurs will rise from the
ashes like a phoenix rises from a wreck and then the butchers will not have
enough knives to slay heads off.
But we do not want that, we only want peace
and tranquility, an atmosphere that inspires a writer to write about beautiful
things and not about the wrongs of the society. But if there are wrongs there
will be braves to voice them and no strength in the world is invincible enough
to stop that upraise. However this anarchy
has to be addressed by the government to establish and enforce law and order.
This hooliganism cannot be allowed to curb the liberal thinking of the ones who
have the guts to think differently and conviction to be vocal about it.
Aritra Chakrabarty Sengupta
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