What happened in Ludhiana on 4th of December is highly condemnable. On that day the poor migrants tried to express their anger for the first time in a way they have learnt here in punjab.They may have thought that they too will be treated in the same way others were treated in the near past.They had no idea that their act might prove so irritating for the callous and guilty administration and for those people who are fed by the sectarian hate politics.
We know well the negative changes in the mindset of officials in Punjab during the present government.They are behaving in a way as if they are the prsonal servants of a family.They are sparing or implicating anybody they want to in the name of the family.That poor have no voice in their courts is an old story.
Whatever communist intervention used to be in the favour of workers in the good old days is badly missing now."we have no links with the workers now.Our leaders still sit in the trade union office but they say that they do not know anybody among the present leaders",says a CPI leader from Ludhiana.
In the absense of any sensible leadership the UP,Bihar labour was swept by the mob mentality and they provided an oppourtunity for those who have been waiting for it for long to assert their monoply here.Ludhiana police actively used the pervailing prejudice to shift the focus and conceal their inefficiency. They have further poisoned the already tense relation.Migrant labour has been taught a lesson and with the media help it has been established as a brave act in the minds of the people of the state.
Jatinderpreet a blogger from Ludhiana has captured the reality:
An eyewitness account of the happenings in
We were told migrant labourers, pejoratively called Bhaiyas here, were rioting in the industrial area in Focal Point.
At around 11.30 we reached there.
A burnt car at the Dhandari flyover and some buses and trucks smouldering with dying out fire further up, stood out as burning testimonies of what had gone there earlier in the morning. Stones lay splattered all around.
It was supposed to be a curfew clamped there. But people roamed around openly wielding lathis, axes and swords. The migrants who were supposed to be the riotous mobs were on the other side of the railway track in the thickly populated Dhandari Khurd area.
The bhaiyas were in attacking mode and local populace was holding them up, we were told.
We soon learnt what was actually going on.
It was plain and simple xenophobia manifesting itself in its ugliest form.
It was started by migrant labourers but they didn’t know what they had bargained for.
Local youth from nearby areas, with police backing them up in background, unleashed a fury, repercussions of which would be felt for long time to come.
Cornered in the village, the unarmed labourers in substantial numbers, came from different sides to pelt stones. The policemen including the officers were the first ones to run. The armed locals withstood the onslaught and retaliated. They picked those they could lay their hands upon, raining blows and lathis mercilessly. Police took over after that. Continuing with the thrashing they dragged the bleeding labourers piling them up in their vehicles.
As the beating continued media was threatened openly not to shoot or click pictures. Media, incidentally, was more than obliging.
By evening the outnumbered and outmaneuvered migrants had retreated into background.
The alienation among the people is growing fast and administeration failure is manifesting on all fronts.It seems we are heading for a full fledged anarchy in the near future. Unfortunately, punjabi society is moving away from the teachings of the Gurus who had recruited khalsa from all over India.We must understand that no society is a closed one in these times of global village.Most of the families of any community have grown diasporic nodes.We need global mentality as a condition for survival.Omar khayam thought of it long long ago:
Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
of every tongue, of every place,
Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
All that inhabit this great earth,
Whatever be their rank or worth,
Are kindred and allied by birth,
And made of the same clay.
Faulty steps need to be rectified at the earliest investing intelligent help.Sane intervention must be injected immediately to mitigate the implied dangers.And it must be investigated by some citizens committee having a record of their national credentials.We need serious introspection and to ask ourselves where are we going.The silent majority is undoubtedly peaceloving what they are again preffering to remain passive onlooker.
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