The Kalashnikov Tribe

Now what could be the connect between the title and this picture?!! No raised eyebrows here, please. I have gone nowhere near an AK-47 ever and i'm mostly harmless. This picture was taken on one of my last few days at BITS-Pilani when my wingies and I had planned to go on a "Pilani-Darshan". We were roaming around the roads and the bylanes taking in the rustic flavour of small-town India. Impressed by this lady's glowing gaiety, i gathered to stike a pose with her. The moment was captured and later forgotten too. Now back home, while sifting through the numerous folders in my hard drive, i chanced upon this picture and what struck me now was not the lady's exuberance alone but the Bold writing in red on the walls - "ABVP". I was surprised that Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad was prevalent in Pilani too. As a part of the BITSian community, I can safely vouch that most of the students at BITS-Pilani comfortably detatch themselves from any sort of political activities and even the students election is a pretty lackluster affair with no political affiliations whatsoever. Then where did ABVP come here. Well, of course there were these other smaller colleges at Pilani meant for the local populace. Apparently those students have had an active participation in these student organizations' activities. Now the ABVP seems to be raising its voice over a worthy cause of illegal Bangladeshi infiltration in India. The organization had mobilized more than 50,000 students in a rally at Kishanganj this month against illegal Bangladeshi infiltration and demanded to completely seal the India-Bangladesh border and put a check on infiltration. It claims that there are two lakh Bangladeshi refugees living in several slums in Jaipur posing a danger to the national security. Now the cause seems plausible as these slum dwellers have long been awarded Indian citizenship and make their livelihood doing petty jobs in the city. They are using up the resources meant truly for Indian citizens. Coming to the aspect of student organizations in India, there is a commendable number with each political party having its own student wing (And as we all know, the number of political parties in India is of course uncountable with a new party coming up almost every week). Most of these student bodies are turning out to be violence inducing ones in the young student's minds. Take for instance the case of the students of Dr. Ambedkar Law University in Chennai who had fought pitched battles over the contents of an invitation for a political event, attacking each other with sticks and iron rods. How could students be so cruel? The inlaid political involvement and casteism of these students has actually spurred violence in them. The Madrassas in Pakistan have also been associated with breeding armies out of young men and providing fighters by imbibing them with cruelty and violence from an impressionable age. The Bajrang dal is India is also no less. I had read the book - 'In Spite of the Gods: The strange rise of modern India' by Edward Luce last year which had pages of illustrations denoting how the Bajrang dal were training the young men to be warriors to spur violence in the society. The motive is all political and there doesn't seem to be a tinge of social benefit or upliftment as these organizations claim to work for. In such a scenario, who said that there was hope in the next generation? We see war everywhere. We have our own neighbour - Sri Lanka, which is fighting the never-ending battle with the world's most notorious terrorist group, the LTTE. It has armies being trained for violence out of small children. And in Mumbai too, the man you see in the newspapers yielding the AK-47 in the Chatrapathi Shivaji terminal could easily be mistaken for any other college student on his way to catch the next train to his college. The only difference is the Kalashnikov and the unrepenting cruelty. Who knows, he could well be a part of one of these so-called student organizations for social upliftment. Bah, Humbug! And while there is this kalashnikov tribe, there is another.....the one which witnesses these events with passive emotions, voicing out loud invectives, writes blog articles and returns back to watching Tropic Thunder on DVD print.
Gen Next??!!!!!!!!!!