Editorial

When people of a country start feeling they live in a graveyard, tragedy itself starts sounding like a platitude. What could be worse than the brutal killing of more than 130 children, they tell each other. But isn’t that what they do each time. Tell each other it can’t get worse. And it keeps getting worse. Nobody knows what else is in store and how much worse.

For the moment what we have is platitudes.

Let this be the defining moment. Let us get together, be one nation, call it our war. Let us find the Taliban apologists or the abettors or the instigators and call them to shame. Or let’s go back to the original sin -- the strategic objective of jihad and the creation of Taliban in the first place.

Within hours of the incident, people started baying for the blood of ‘terrorists’ who had the audacity to kill innocent children. They should be brought out from the jails and publicly hanged every two miles. In less than a day, the prime minister lifted the moratorium on capital punishment as if to allay people’s anger.

Within hours, people started pointing fingers at Indian hand, RAW, US, CIA, Jews. The leader of a religious political group said it and so did a ‘popular’ television anchor because they had ‘intelligence reports’. That the army chief went to Afghanistan instead to sort this matter out was not necessarily a part of the counter narrative these people are hell bent on selling to the people of this country.

That is when tragedy sounds like a platitude. That is why tragedy ceases to be tragedy. That is when you start losing hope again.