Reading Roots…

Human beings, I have come to believe, are capable of innumerable acts of unimaginable grotesqueness towards all life forms. Reading about treatment meted out to African slaves for two centuries and to Jews during Holocaust, one loses faith in humanity. But then we proudly look at the Human Rights Charter or the U.N. or so many other agencies working for ‘peace’ and ‘development’ and restore our solemn belief that we are far civilized than our ancestors. This, though, doesn’t stop us from ill-treating our household helps, workers in construction sites and even convicts. No Sir, we have the freedom to define who is exactly ‘human’ and what are these ‘rights’. We can define what is ‘unfair’ and what is ‘gross’. Basically we are saying that the benchmark of monstrosity has already been established by our very able predecessors. As long as we don’t beat the benchmark we are not wholly doomed.