Sir — This refers to the article, “Compassion: Missing link in an indifferent world” (September 30) by Hiranmay Karlekar. Indeed, man is a sadist, masochist, who tries to dominate others in the name of race, religion, caste, colour, nationality and all norms of heinous divisive credentials and also relish the torture heaped upon those who are ‘not my own’.
This is the reason why the Himalayan woes, sufferings and deaths of persecuted refugees do not hurt our conscience. It’s good that the European Union is doing its bit in favour of the Syrian refugees, who are escaping their country scarred by the civil war. But there’s no such sympathy for the Rohingyas who are being mercilessly killed and thrown out of their homeland Myanmar.
The heart wrenching picture of the corpse of a Syrian baby on the shores of the Mediterranean had shaken the conscious of the world, to some extent prompted the European Union to open its doors for a significant number of refugees. In contrast, similar pathetic picture of the Rohingyas lying dead on the sea coast of Cox’s Bazar hardly cause a reverberation in the world.
The whole thing pays lip service to the rhetoric of ‘international brotherhood’ and ‘global village’ and the country which tries to project its ‘liberalism’ by mouthing vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family) should hang its head in shame. The passing away of many refugees following persecution expose the blatant hypocrisy, double standards, inhumanity and cruelty deeply embedded within us.