WE all seek justice and fairplay. Most often, when we are denied those, we pick up the gauntlet and fight personal battles. At a banal level, we cannot tolerate a neighbour who blares a music system late into the night. Or when our place in a queue is taken over by a jostler. Or when we are denied a promotion or increment that we truly deserve. Also when people we love and care for insist on misinterpreting us and/or take us for granted. In almost each of these instances, we fight for personal justice. We fight these battles to the finish, tooth and nail, demonstrating our angst publicly.
However, how do we react when we see injustice at a social or community level? When we see people defacing a national monument. Or even when people litter the streets or defecate in public. Or when we see a bunch of unruly people pass lewd comments at womenfolk. Or when seniors ‘rag’ juniors with sadistic severity. Or when government officers refuse to take cognizance of a genuine public grievance. In all these cases, we choose to remain cold and indifferent, when we don’t see us directly affected.
Simply, are we not raring to battle any form of personal injustice but don’t ever want to wage a fight for social justice?
Let me share a beautiful, real-life story to awaken us to a new way of thinking, living and contributing.
It is unlikely you have heard of Dashrath Manjhi (1929-2007) before. He lived in Gelaur, a small village in Bihar’s Gaya district. Several years ago, in 1959, when Manjhi’s wife was expecting their first child and he was rushing her to a hospital in Wazirganj, 19 kms away, she died on the way. She died for two reasons. One, Gelaur did not have a Primary Health Centre. Second, the road from Gelaur to Wazirganj was 19 km long only because it wound its way around a mountain. After his wife died, Manjhi knocked at every possible door in the Bihar administration petitioning that a road be built through the mountain, linking Gelaur with Wazirganj, so that another mother-to-be or patient in emergency does not meet the same fate as his wife. Not surprisingly, no one cared. After two years, Manjhi stopped running behind the babus and netas. Instead he got down to work on laying a road through the mountain himself. The mountain was 360 ft long, 25 ft wide and 30 ft high. Step by step, one rock at a time, Manjhi chipped away. For 22 long years. At the end of which, in 1983, the road through the mountain was completed. By Manghi, single-handedly; with no public or government support whatsoever. Despite his remarkable feat, no one from the Bihar administration recognised his grit and effort__the distance between Gelaur and Wazirganj was now reduced to 6 km and travel time was shrunk by two-thirds.
It was only in 2007, 24 years after he had completed the road, that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, recognised Manjhi’s effort and awarded him a piece of land hailing him ‘Bihar’s Mountain Man’. Manjhi, spontaneously, returned the land awarded and instead requested the Chief Minister to build a Primary Health Centre in Gelaur.
The month following his recognition, Manjhi died leaving behind a lifetime’s work (the road through the mountain), a message and a moral that will serve as a beacon to today’s youth: channelise your energies, selflessly, and make any battle meaningful so that not just you, but everyone__the community, the people, the nation__benefits from the fight.
To demand and fight for personal justice is a natural human tendency. And I don’t demand we curb that.
But to be indifferent to demanding social justice because it does not concern us is both a selfish perspective and a fallacy. What makes matters worse is when we demand change around us without wanting to be part of it!
So, people, fight. But let the battle be meaningful and purposeful for all.