Lunatics never unite

As children we were told the story of how four bulls running in disarray are easily attacked and killed by a single lion while when they stood together, the lion backed away in fear.The moral that was dinned in our impressionable minds was that strength lay in unity.We have also been taught that singly the wooden sticks can be easily broken but well nigh impossible when bound together to buttress the point that united we stand and divided we fall.I read in a book by Kopmeyer that when a visitor to a lunatic asylum asked how only 3 guards were able to control 100 violence prone dangerous lunatics, he was told that lunatics never unite.

This set me thinking that it is not the lunatics alone who do not unite but even the common people are unaware of the power of unity.Otherwise how would one explain that British colonialists controlled crores of our people with a very small military force for more than two centuries.Even today it is the lack of unity that enables unscruplous politicians and officials to indulge in unabashed corruption of astronomical magnitude in every aspect of our lives.If only the people had learnt that strength lay in their unity and in the power of their ballot,we could have achieved a clean and honest government everywhere across the country.Jayaprakash Narayan was aware of the people’s power and galvanised the entire country to throw out an oppressive government.It was the strength of the united stand that made it possible.

It is time that unlike lunatics we should unite to oppose all forms of injustice and delay in justice, discrimination on the bais of gender,religion and caste,unfair displacement of people to benefit a few, mindless accumulation of economic power in the hands of a few business families,appropriation of political power again in a few families, flawed policies of keeping the poor ever in want and prevention of a true democratic ethos in the governance of the country.If we fail to stand up united,today the posterity will mock at us saying lunatics never unite. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Edmund Burke