Are we still in the 18th Century?

All over the world, people are fighting for the rights of minorities. We are all familiar with the current black lives matter protests. Every privileged human being is trying to fight for the minorities rights and trying to change their current social status. 

But the Indian society is still sleeping peacefully under the blanket of ignorance. India has always been a country of diverse cultures, religions, etc which had always led to some or the other kind of scuffles between the minorities and the majorities. The minorities have always been suffering, being exploited by the majority. Even in today's world, where equality is considered as humanity, there are some sections of the society who are still blinded by the differences. The differences may be religious, cultural, linguistic, class differences, etc. But still the minorities are harmed in some or the other way. 

There has been an incident last week in Uttar Pradesh, where a Dalit boy was killed by four upper-caste boys. Now the reasons behind it given that the victim was praying at the local temple, which in some way offended the upper castes. There also has been a debate going on where some claim the murder was because of personal problem not discriminatory reasons. But this is just one incident where the reason is being debated. Since years, we have seen murders and public killing on the claims of castes and religious differences. And unsurprisingly, the minorities are the one to suffer. We have all read and seen reports of mob-lynching of lower castes, Muslims and other minorities. 

Are we so socially ill-fated and blinded that we are still fighting over trivial issues like caste and religion when there are far bigger issues like poverty, education, human rights to tackle? Why can't we see the seriousness behind the exploitation of the minorities? Why can't we treat them as equal? Are we still mentally living in the 18th century, where such atrocities were considered normal? Have we really developed? It is need of the time to spread awareness regarding this in the rural as well as the urban areas of our country. 

The privileged people of our country tend to live ignoring all such atrocities, living a satisfied life. They do not care about all this as long as they are not affected by this. But they need to understand that they are the ones who can actually bring the change, they are the ones who have the power and the ability to bring the required changes. Because right from childhood, all throughout our religious text and throughout the history, we have been taught that it is the moral duty of the privileged to protect the underprivileged. It’s time to wake up from the slumbers and work for the change.