I dont like titles

There in between the bunch of lines on a page in between big bunch of pages of a big book stood a line.

A line talking about a Marathi guy standing in a Mumbai train getting into a conflict with a Gujarathi Guy with the underlying problem being their regionlaity. A line put in passing in a chapter dedicated to  describing a gangster's life(from the book - Maximum city).

Reading that single line suddenly put things into prospective. I was so busy being annoyed by the antics of Shiv sena, Bal Thackeray and Udhay Thackeray and their xenophobia that I forgot to think there might be a genuine root cause. That Marathis could have been mistreated, denied opportunities at the hands of Wealthier Gujaratis/Parsis, on a land that belonged to their state. It isn't right to do that  to any one in any state.  To use a different language in their own state when that wasn't the case 20 years ago clearly even to me indicates a killing of a language.

Cut to a year back, I was reading an interview of Srilankan Military chief and he suddenly says, "Srilanka belongs to Sinhalese". Again I hate LTTE for all the wreck they created, all the children they employed as soldiers and loads of  stuff, that I sometimes forget that  beyond the LTTEs there was a genuine cause - real injustice. Tamil residents some of whom would have  been living from 10th century  in SriLanka were denied voting rights. Even when Voting rights  exist on paper there are innumerable ways in which minorites suffer discrimination. Denying voting rights makes that discrimination so official that it is hard to imagine the plight  of tamilians. Even the recent Tamil immigrant s to the Island have a 200 year history. A generation born and brought up in a land will consider it as mother land(something the American immigrants wont find hand to understand) that 200 years  is more than enough to be given voting rights.

It is easy to say the Politicians/ Terrorists have hijacked the issues but I think we should remember that beyond the antics lies a genuine problem. That definitely need to be addressed.

Infact when I think about it, I dont see any other path apart from these antics/ Terrorist activity*. Like waging a peace march/ fasting would change the minds of these racists, who are we kidding? But why should innocent people lose lives for your causes? Why should children of your own ethnicity lose their childhood when their futures are already bleak due to the prevailing racism/inequality?  These Paths absolutely dont seem to be right except I dont know any other either.

* I am not clubbing them, Terrorism kills, Shiv Sena's antics mostly just annoys/ causes material losses.