We don’t question the dead

Sixteen people died after they were run over by a goods train in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. But before the details of their gruesome deaths are analysed, let’s recall some other gruesome things that have happened in the past few months. A video surfaced on social media showing how people of China skinned, boiled and ate dogs. It turned the stomachs of the animal lovers and even some others who don’t associate with such labels.

How dare the Chinese commit such atrocities! These innocent creatures, what is their fault?

But when the Coronavirus Lockdown began in India and it was seen that many labourers who were starving or walking miles and miles to reach their homes were dying, a common question that was being asked was “Why don’t they just stay where they are?”

It is easier to pose those questions when the dead are not known to you. If anyone has had a death in their family; with a smoker dying of lung cancer, a person dying of cardiac issues, a person facing severe illnesses due to unhealthy lifestyle and then dying a lonely death in a hospital bed, we don’t ask questions. We don’t ask “Why didn’t he just take care of his health?”
We pay our condolences and move on with our lives letting the dead remain dead and the living close relatives of the dead grieve alone.

Even after a person with whom you have had personal differences dies, you don’t question their decision-making when they were alive. You hope that their soul rests in peace. Because in our culture, we respect the dead. It is the living we don’t seem to care about.

However, a different scenario exists when it comes to these sixteen people. Some say that they were tired of walking for miles and miles to reach their homes. They slept on the tracks due to fatigue. Others believe they might have fallen unconscious from the hunger and the heat. But quickly pictures of half-eaten rotis make their way into comments contradicting the thought. It couldn’t have been hunger. Meanwhile, one thing is clear.
Nearly all of you want to find out why they sleeping on the railway tracks to begin with. Or harder-to-crack-nuts would say “Railway tracks are no place to sleep. Period.”

That’s very easy to say for the privileged class who have a bed and a home during the lockdown. It’s even easier for those whose lifestyles aren’t at all impacted while according to the International Labour Organisation nearly 40 crore people in India will be driven further into poverty due to this Coronavirus Pandemic. But aren’t we forgetting something? Why are we questioning their deaths?

There are 16 people who have lost their lives, families ruined, someone has just lost the breadwinner of the family and where is the respect? No? Not even for the dead?

This shows our hypocrisy and inhumanity which has seeped further and further into our hearts. We care about animals more than humans, respect the dead more than the living and would much more easily see the poor eradicated from the world rather than see the system which has driven them into this poverty.  

Why were sixteen people on the railway tracks amidst lockdown to begin with?

That’s the answer to why they might have slept on the railway tracks and why we no longer have to worry about sixteen empty stomachs anymore. There’s more for your stores and warehouses now.