Tiananmen and Today

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It was a usual Sunday afternoon. Yes, I never know Sunday mornings. I'm a wasted would-be engineer who sleeps when the sun goes up and wakes up when it goes down. I've always had this habit of reading, no matter how wasted i was. Sunday was special, because it brought with it The Hindu Magazine. I really liked that piece, and I read something there that got me thinking and got me here, typing at 5 in the morning.

About 25 years ago, Tiananmen happened. For the uninitiated, students of the Peking University in China went on a massive strike against the ruling Communist Party (CPC) in 1989, demanding reforms in the then current system. The rest is history. PLA was called in to clear the Tiananmen square and they cleared it. Hundreds and thousands of students died on a day that goes down as a red blot on humanity.

                But what amazed me, as I read through and researched about it more later, is that their legacy is dwindling. The politically correct students of the same university agree with the CPC's stand against the rioters. Yes, that's how they are mentioned in China. "Rioters". Chinese schoolbooks don't mention what happened at Tiananmen Square anymore. The next generation will forget and even if they do get to know, will be amazed why kids would go protesting against such a progressive system. Things eventually did change in China, and now we see how efficient and prosperous it has come to be despite the huge hurdle, given its massive population. The role of the Tiananmen tragedy in shaping China today is debatable but i like to believe that those people of China didn't die for nothing. They chose to be flag bearers because they knew something was terribly wrong with the system and it needed to be fixed.

I haven't written anything in a long time and I don't know why I'm writing about this. I have more pressing issues to write about. We have more pressing issues to write about. We are a country faced with political upheaval, a change in the office and the party flags at 7, Race Court Road. Some sense it for good, especially with that slogan they've been going on with, and the others, well ,they comprise of a lot of people, from opposition members to plain cynics. But I choose to write about something that happened in another country at another time.

Why?

Simply because I think we have a lot to learn from what happened 25 years ago in the neighbourhood, especially with the new change in power. I agree that running a country the size and strength of India is a massive challenge and needs to be done with some discipline. But it can be done without that discipline turning into an iron fist. We don't want the nation so pissed off that it can't hold itself and most of all, we don't want the fragile secular fabric holding our country break down. India doesn't need a Tiananmen Square to remind itself how power can corrupt. If it should do anything, power should humble. We don't have to go the same road to achieve a similar end. There are different paths and ours is a democratic path. I sincerely hope, that in the next five years and beyond, India achieves something that it was always destined to, to become the golden bird it once was, to become a society of mutual admiration and most of all, an unquestionable intolerance for anything that threatens to break us apart.


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