Jacuques Rossues has rightly said
,”man is born free but he is everywhere in chains, God made all the things good
but Man meddle with them and they become evil”. Does one is tagged as a member
of a particular class, caste, color or creed at the time of his/her birth? The
answer can never be in the affirmative. It is the society which divides human
beings into these various watertight compartments, and this division is so
deep- rooted that it seems natural and acceptable rather than a social
construct. It is therefore that human beings have lost their original and
primary identities of being human, and have acquired the secondary ones, based
on ethnic, geographic, religious, and sectarian and caste basis.
If the current plight of human beings
around the world is critically examined, reasons behind most of the
infightings, hatred, acrimonies and lack of the spirit of co-existence and
fellow-feelings can easily be tracked down to the existence of these secondary identities save economic
considerations. These identities have not only dispersed us away from the common
bond of humanity, which otherwise could glove us together, but have put
us into a fierce competition with one another. Where no one is ready to
compromise but to assert his own identity, no matter how much harm does it
cause.
Things would have been easier, had we
accepted plurality and made it a part and parcel of our societal norms, but it
seems within the realms of impossibility. Validity for one’s action/view is passionately
adored, which automatically implies as negation of the rest, and thus the fight
continues. These identities are neither stable nor fixed, but vary and get
multiplied with the passage of time, which further complicates the existing
sorry state of humans’ affairs.
The concept of plurality is out of
question as the scheme of things demonstrate, the new identities are hell bent on
eroding tolerance, co-existence, and fellow-feelings. We need to find out a way
of salvation, a scheme which firmly gloves together the dispersing and
alienated human beings who have had their parents in common in the yore. The
religion failed to glove them together, as it itself is subject to
proliferation of sects and factions which definitely multiplies not narrow down
identities. The bond of geographical identity loses itself to caste and color, and
the language too is subject to dialectical differentiations and is a medium
common to all who are again divided in their creed and smaller geographical
units.
The only way forward we are left with,
is to firmly grasp the only identity which is common to all the human beings with
no variance, and that the identity of humanity. It can truly glove us together
irrespective of the class, caste, color and creed. If we cannot totally shun
the socially constructed identities, we must at least subvert them to the
primary one. Perhaps it is the only option we are left with, capitalizing on
which we can see some light at the tunnel, and salvage ourselves from the
present mess to the safer shores of truism.
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