Afgani citizens! Till Yesterday late at night, I had two visions:the Panjsheer Fighters or the abused common citizens ready to tie themselves to a flight to flee the motherland. I kept on defending both the versions in a protracted online argument.
It was in a rather aggrieved mood that I was looking up Afganisthan. I was agitated that America could not see the injustice of its actions. And then there was this news item. It said that much worse than the Taliban was this very common, absolutely regular Afgani practice of "bachkani" whereby boys were regularly made to wear women's dress, made to dance in all male parties, and were then abused!
Despite having read "The Kite Runner" and thus having overcome the childhood naivete of a "Kabuliwala", this news, with terrible pics, of regular abuse made me feel so disgusted that I questioned my own misplaced sympathy for such abusers. Indeed, can an abuser pretend to be the abused? Can the inherently evil pretend innocence? Can those, who for their own silly, vicious fun, often momentary, destroy, scar for a lifetime someone else, completely innocent, totally vulnerable?
No, is my resoundingly echoing answer. No difficult context can justify their current victim card game. Why could they never wipe out such evil from their social practices when the times were amenable? Where was their civil society, their civic sense when such a tradition was rampantly allowed? Can they then call out (to) the rest of the world? Is abuse inherent to their very being? If so, how can the abuser be the abused in any context?
True, life is never black or white. Surely, political contexts are harsh. Even then, I find it now difficult to assume a kind of moral relativism whereby the endemic abuser presents self as the abused!Unethical is such a convenient use of abuse, I feel.
Pratima @ would not like to even mention Aai-Papa in such a write-up!
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