Black and White

Too many people have told me too often that life throws up shades of grey more often that it does black or white. "Nothing is for certain"; "It's not as simple as it seems";"There are always exceptions" - these are only some of the excuses of an explanation that have been offered by way of justification for a compulsive indecisiveness that I have so often found inexcusable. Try offering these excuses to the widow of Avneesh Kumar Dev, a senior HR manager at Maruti Suzuki, who was murdered by a mob of workers in the Manesar plant of his company. Try telling her that punishing her husband's murderers is not a simple matter - that there are many shades of grey involved since the violence that was perpetrated this July at Maruti is the manifestation of deeper malaise which has something to do with socio-economic divide and class struggle between the haves and the have nots. Try telling her that her husband's death was collateral damage in a centuries old process of giving voice to industrial workers, the poor and the downtrodden. Try explaining that he is not the first or the only casualty in the struggle for achieving the socialist ideals that our economy and our country has been founded on - that his death is a sacrifice towards a larger cause. Try telling her that in this instance too, one is being too harsh and too judgmental by pronouncing the mob of workers guilty before conducting a "thorough investigation into the matter, at the end of which, rest assured. none of the guilty shall be allowed to go scot free". Try by starting your story with how workers at Manesar were never allowed to form a trade union, were never given a voice and were not given the wage hikes that they had been demanding for so long; tell her this is why things came to a head and got out of control; this is why someone broke her husband's bones and set him on fire while he was still alive.

Perhaps you won't. Perhaps these excuses are easier to proffer on televised national prime time debates. Perhaps deep inside someone knows the truth - that sometimes, perhaps more often than not, it is as simple as black or white. That this was murder. Not class struggle, not a manifestation of socio-economic divide, not an 'unfortunate accident'. This was murder which should be avenged - by awarding the most stringent punishment that the law of the land allows: the death penalty. Let us not glorify this instance by giving it the name of industrial strife. Let us learn to identify the black from the white before we permanently delude ourselves with grey.