MEN BEING HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS!

Yes, you read the title right, and mind you it's not sensationalized. It is as honest and straight forward as the statement 'the sun rose today!'. People are being hunted for no fault of theirs in the 21st century. The reason for this hateful development is not leisure or entertainment, though one can argue that it is in fact a reality in certain places.

The place is Tanzania and the time is 8 in the morning. Little Alice* is getting ready to go to school and when her mother announces that the security has arrived she hurriedly stuffs her books into the bag and rushes out. Contrary to what this scene might suggest she is not the daughter of the president. She is not even the daughter of a rich man. Alice is an albino- that rare condition in which the skin loses it's pigmentation and becomes pale white. The condition is not contagious in any way, neither does it affect the efficiency of the patient in any way. The need for security for this little albino girl arises from the fact that her kind are being hunted for their skin and bones and other body parts!

Tanzania, like many of it's African fellow nations has a history that is deeply rooted in witch craft and voodoo. The voodoo priests still exert a huge influence on the general populace even in today's world. It is these voodoo priests that have popularized the view that the albinos have non-human powers and that their body parts will bring favor on people. Thus albinos, including little children, are being hunted like animals and their body parts are being sold as voodoo aids. The albino community is very understandably alarmed and fearful for their lives. The government has taken note of this most unfortunate development and has deployed security to protect the albino community. As a result kids like Alice have to have security even to go to their schools lest they be hunted like animals!

This is alarming and disconcerting to an extreme degree. But if we stop to consider it carefully the same seems to be the case for certain other groups of people: the difference being that we have sanctioned it. And the biggest motivator for our sanction is fear. Irrational and unjustifiable fear. In India there have been instances where entire communities of Dalits or untouchables have been lynched merely on suspicion of thefts. How can this be justified? Have we not sanctioned their deaths with our indifference to their cause? Have we not relegated them to a position that's lower than human by silently allowing these events to occur? A single case of crime in a middle class affluent society has been given wide coverage and the entire law machinery has been pressed into service. What about the more than a dozen group of untouchables that were lynched in central India this year? They have been stowed away in some corner of the print media that is surprisingly very biased in it's coverage- the media that is supposed to lay everything on an equal platform.

The perversity of the albino hunt in Tanzania shocks us only because it represents something that we have not sanctioned. But what about the daily murder of dignity and pride we silently observe only because we have learned to live with them? Their fault is only that they belong to the wrong group, but is that a fault at all? Lets be more conscious of our role in society and not act as if we are merely observers. We are not- far from it, we are society itself. It's values, it's creed, it's laws and principles- we create and live them.