Today in Human Rights Class, we got to watch Hotel Rwanda. The movie got me thinking...about all that I had read up on Gujarat during one of my previous internships, about the riots which had happened in my city in the roads so close to my home, of the fear I feel in my gut at the sight of millions of flags of a certain colour hung on the streets and in front of churches, temples and mosques, reminding me that I am in the minority and that is in itself a crime for some groups of people, and about what could happen in the future, especially since my home State is being more frequently now referred to, even though only in academic circles, as the Gujarat of the South. I couldn't help but wonder what would be the reaction of my very hard core HR friends, some of whom I share a very close bond with, if a situation ever arose in the future where they might have to make a choice between what may then be the dictates of their ideology and the lives of their friends.
Lunch conversation with the Goatman, and I found that he too had been thinking about what might be...except, unlike my thoughts, which were religion centric, his castles were built on caste. I couldn't help but reflect that even though I don't know too much about caste and it does not make the least bit of a difference to me what a person's caste is (come to think of it, I don't even know what the Goatman's caste is!!!), if, in a hypothetical situation, the Government, the police, and all the powers that be, wanted to wipe out all people of a particular caste, even if it did not affect me directly, what would my reaction be should they, say, want to know from the disciplinary committee, in which hostel rooms all those of that caste were living. I also realized how there are so many of us, belonging to one minority group or the other, and in spite of the great ease, familiarity and even love, with which we interact with others of majority groups and they with us, deep down inside, there does exist an insecurity about what could occur were situations to change.
What that movie drove home to me is the fragility of all those established spaces and institutions we respect so highly....the Government, the Police, International Reactions, International Non-Governmental Organizations,...and the importance which fickle existences, like human relationships, favours, and individual greed, can come to play in such situations when colour, caste, religion, sex or physical build can blind races to the humanness of those they kill.
