The holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers in Germany.
India’s dehumanisation too began much before hungry migrants were sprayed with sodium hypochlorite.
It takes a long time to desensitise a large swathe of a country’s population to bring it to a point where the unthinkable becomes normal.
Germany took its time to normalise the gassing of millions of Jews as part of a bigger plan.
There may be time yet in India to lock away inconvenient human-beings in detention centres but make no mistake, we have already reached the gas chamber level of desensitisation.
Perhaps the seeds of criminal apathy were always there.
That is why it did not matter to us that a few hundreds died during Demonetisation, a student committed suicide and another disappeared in a top university and later many others were brutalised across institutions under one pretext or another, a remorseless pogrom was dismissed as a figment of liberal imagination, rapists and lynchers and terror accused were openly celebrated, marching farmers blamed for causing traffic jams and protesting old women dismissed as paid propagandists, professors and activists locked up and hounded as urban naxals or anti-nationals.
And so finally, we have now come to a point, where the mass exodus of the poor and the hungry from cities to villages means nothing to us because we are not where they are.
And we will watch Ramayan on TV, post Yoga videos and play antakshri on twitter to stay immune to the vast human misery around us.
And shrug when migrants are “punished” with lathis and chemical sprays for being desperate and defenceless.
We will excuse police and state brutality as part of a bigger and necessary plan.
As long as we can watch the stars from the safety of our balconies. And beat thalis to spread some positivity in these grim times.