Responses

1. Kousik says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 12:18 am (#)

   And that too, when he died of nat­ural cause. Seri­ously there’s some­thing wrong with us. I can’t think what’d have hap­pened if he was killed in acci­dent (or in Veerappan’s custody). :-(

2. Arjun says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 1:13 am (#)

   very bad. things like these make me sad about our coun­try. some­how we need to change our mentality.

3. IMHO says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 8:13 am (#)

   IMHO, this is due to the vast divide between the have’s and the have-not. A large sec­tion of the soci­ety looks and reads abt the mil­lions, the so called IT folks make in the city and see that noth­ing of this wealth has per­co­lated down to them. As Girish Kar­nad said, it is now Ban­ga­lore vs Bengalooru.

4. Vivek M says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 10:04 am (#)

   For once I am really ashamed of being a Ban­ga­lorean. The national press has more to say on the sense­less voilence than cel­e­brate the great life of this artiste. It seems that the voilence is obvi­ously insti­gated by a group of half-educated, job­less, curi­ous onlook­ers who had not even an ounce of respect for Dr.Raj. Like some­one who said in an inter­view, the peo­ple who felt real remorse stayed home and mourned in silence.

5. pramukh says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 4:29 pm (#)

   I was try­ing to explain it to my amer­i­can friend because we coud’nt have our tele­con­fer­ence with bangalore.It was pretty hard.I told him it was like madonna or elvis dying.He had a look of utter disbelief.

6. kris says:
   

   April 14th, 2006 at 8:00 pm (#)

   When we com­ment and lament about vio­lence then I feel we have under­stood Mob Psy­chol­ogy. This is noth­ing new in India or else­where. When Sikh riots hap­pened we did not have blog­ging, what about riots after Indira Gandhi died.
   As IMHO rightly says its the divide between HAVE and HAVE NOT’s. We all sit with a fat salary and pay for any­thing we want with­out ask­ing sec­ond ques­tion, but what about guys who do dif­fer­ent kind of jobs. Where do they have money to afford things which are only within the reach of so-called s/w engineers.

   Only if we change they way we are liv­ing today, such kind of vio­lence can be min­imised in future though there can be no guar­entee that these would stop.

7. Anon says:
   

   April 15th, 2006 at 3:50 am (#)

   1. There was a total fail­ure of gov­ern­ment machin­ery. Where were the con­tin­gency mea­sures? The deci­sions were hap­haz­ard and kept chang­ing every minute. Instead of blam­ing in con­spir­acy the­o­ries and lack of per­son­nel, the gov­ern­ment should own full respon­si­bil­ity. It is their duty to main­tain law and order and they don’t do that by order the police to kill inno­cent people.

   2. Our male dom­i­nated soci­ety — the guwa­hati ODI crowd and this was purely male dom­i­nated. Easy for emo­tions to go lose and the sit­u­a­tion out of con­trol. If only there were women, the sit­u­a­tion would have been different.

   All in all, WE have FAILED in cre­at­ing a civil soci­ety. Our coun­try is not a democ­racy, but a moboc­racy. Mobs have the power — be it Ayo­d­hya, Godhra, Guwa­hati or Bangalore.

8. Jag says:
   

   April 15th, 2006 at 11:00 pm (#)

   Quite sad indeed. Slightly off topic, but I was intrigued by some­thing that com­menter “Kris” (Sathish) left above. He men­tioned “Sikh Riots” — which puz­zled me some­what. So I did a search on Google for “Sikh Riots” — and I got page­ful of results titled “Anti-Sikh Riots” instead.

   I think I agree with most of Sathish’s point though. There are many, many occa­sions in time and in places all over the world where we have lamented mob vio­lence, but I’m not sure we have really under­stood the rea­sons for it, or if we have, the truths are often irrec­on­cil­able due to them strik­ing at the heart of one’s per­sonal, cul­tural and spir­i­tual beliefs. And there’s very lit­tle you can do about it if these come into con­flict. The anti-Sikh riots fol­low­ing the death of Indira Gandhi are just one of many, many examples …

9. kris says:
   

   April 15th, 2006 at 11:25 pm (#)

   Yes, Jag.. i think i made a mis­take in writ­ing as Sikh riots instead of anti-sikh riots…
   this hap­pened as Indira Gandhi’s killers were believed to be Sikhs…

10. Jag says:
    

    April 16th, 2006 at 12:33 am (#)

    No wor­ries Sathish! As it hap­pens — the mur­der of Indira Ghandi was indeed a Sikh. And the “mob vio­lence” that ensued was almost cer­tainly based on a belief that all Sikhs were evil and respon­si­ble for it. A belief whipped up, in part, by cor­rupted offi­cials of the state look­ing for wider ret­ri­bu­tion. It is indeed sad that the “mob men­tal­ity” can over­ride all sense of indi­vid­ual human rationality …

11. Jag says:
    

    April 16th, 2006 at 3:44 am (#)

    I meant to say “mur­derer”, not “mur­der” above. Apols.

12. perry says:
    

    April 17th, 2006 at 9:38 pm (#)

    What to do? As the com­ments of some folks on a city bus I over­heard said: ” They are not of proper mind saar, they are like that only.” or ” peo­ple are not sci­en­tif­i­cally cyn­i­cals” (prob­a­bly meant as super­sti­tious people).…

13. Sureshchander says:
    

    April 19th, 2006 at 2:46 pm (#)

    The vio­lence and hooli­gan­ism fol­low­ing the death of Dr Raj Kumar is a symp­tom of the great divide that is tak­ing place in Ban­ga­lore due to the IT boom in Ban­ga­lore. To me it is a wake up call.
    I am myself an IT pro­fes­sional on a short visit to Ban­ga­lore. Infosys, its share­hold­ers, NASSCOM or the IT min­istry can rejoice the announce­ment of 600% div­i­dend announced by the Infosys.
    But what it means to a com­mon man? A house or a plot of land has move fur­ther away from him. It means more aliens among them­selves. It also means los­ing their cul­tural iden­tity in times to come. Unfor­tu­nately, the edu­ca­tion in our insti­tu­tions of higher learn­ing alien­ate our young minds from their roots rather than inte­grate them with the com­mon man.
    What has Infosys or Wipro done for the com­mu­nity? What advan­tage the com­mu­nity derives from the suc­cess of Infosys or Wipro except frus­tra­tion and anger that will get man­i­fested at some future time. It is not new phe­nom­e­non – it hap­pened in Cal­cutta and north east against Mar­waris or in Uganda against Indian busi­ness­men in 60s and 70s.
    I am not Kan­nada speak­ing but I feel strongly that com­pa­nies like Infosys and Wipro should make it manda­tory for its employ­ees to know Kanad and inte­grate them in local cul­ture by encour­ag­ing Kan­nad the­atre for exam­ple. They must also set up insti­tu­tions to look into the cul­tural and social impli­ca­tions of their indus­try.
    The indus­try and soci­ety must look into this seri­ously oth­er­wise we will be in tur­moil not in too dis­tant future. Look what is hap­pen­ing in 160 dis­tricts – so called Naxal infested regions. It is not law and order prob­lem. I won­der if there are any seri­ous stud­ies on this issue in places like JNU which may boast of experts on var­i­ous areas of inter­na­tional conflict.

14. agora says:
    

    April 22nd, 2006 at 4:48 pm (#)

    Sureshchan­der, well put:

    Here is an arti­cle in Asia Times on the topic:

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HD22Df01.html

    One way IT com­pa­nies in Ban­ga­lore can meet their Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­ity (CSR) oblig­a­tions is by offer­ing their out-of-state employ­ees lessons in Kan­nada and by con­tribut­ing to local cul­tural activ­i­ties. But, most com­pa­nies in Ban­ga­lore think their CRS ends with ‘donat­ing’ old com­put­ers they are try­ing to dis­pose. The sit­u­a­tion in Ban­ga­lore has reached a tip­ping point and IT com­pa­nies being respon­si­ble for the influx of out­siders into the city, have a greater respon­si­bil­ity to address the con­cerns of the local people.

15. Raghu says:
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm (#)

    I totally agree with Sureshchan­der and agora in their views. The divide is get­ting big­ger and big­ger and it is time the IT com­pa­nies claimed some respon­si­bil­ity and did some­thing back for the city that has helped them grow and acheive what they have.

16. Shael says:
    

    May 3rd, 2006 at 1:42 pm (#)

    Now I know why we’ve never met in ban­ga­lore, you must spend all your time doing this!

    Luck­ily for me, I split at day break that thurs­day morn­ing, the morn­ing after, and drove full pelt like a bat out of hell, I nearly did not make it for the efforts of some tire burn­ing, stone throw­ing louts, thanks for par­al­lel side roads.

    Any­way, hope you are doing great my friend.

17. harry says:
    

    July 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm (#)

    Ya its really a sad state of affairs . Every life should have equal worth . It should not mat­ter if its of a polit­i­cal leader or a com­mon man .

    Sikh Reli­gious Books

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