What the recent Orlando shooting teaches us.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m pretty sure you’ve read about the Orlando shooting that took place recently and is being dubbed as the most horrific and deadliest mass shooting in the US. The shooting left a 50 people dead and hundreds injured and millions scarred for life.

So why the unrest? Probably because the shooting took place in a Gay night club. Or because the shooter belonged to a particular religion (read Islamophobia). Or because the IS took responsibility for the attack. Or because Donald Trump had to politicize the incident with one mean tweet. Or because Indians and many others who can be best described as homophobic are suddenly enraged by it. Or because you’re one of those people who’ll complain how the world does not care about what is happening in most areas of conflict throughout the world. I could go on and on…

But the fact of the matter remains that lives were lost and since it was an attack on certain people who are still trying to find acceptance from certain classes of people, the whole thing turns all the more nightmarish.

While Donald Trump uses this incident to propagate his anti-Islam agenda, I read a post by a member of the LGBTQ community who said that even in such difficult times, love is the only answer there is. That they may be enraged but there’s no place for Islamophobia in their world because at the end of the day we’re all the same people- made of same flesh and blood. And that is all the answer that one needs. If a person who’s so deeply and personally connected with the tragedy can see the situation so clearly, why is it that we are not able to do so?

Is it because we’re inherently racist but refuse to acknowledge it? And we use incidents like these as an outlet to justify our racism or our hatred? These are just plain facts that I am laying down over here. And it is amazing that for a society that prides itself on being so advanced, scientifically, we have failed to perhaps find the meaning of humanity.

There are hundreds of people out there trying to change the narrative of what happened but we have to realize that it is doing us more harm than good. Maybe it is time to process this all in a more positive light- for example, we Indians are enraged over what happened, atleast that’s what our social media accounts say, but how many of us feel no qualm in cracking a gay joke? Or terming a friend as ‘gay’ if they do something that is not in consonance with our definition of ‘manliness’. Or how many of us realize that we are guilty of the crime as much as the shooter till the time Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is not repealed? 

These are some very hard questions with no easy answers but the recent Orlando shooting is the wake up call that the world has needed since long to be more accepting towards everyone not for some huge reason but simply because we’re all human beings and that is all the reason that we need to love and support each other.