Disturbing street brawl : Reflecting society
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 24, 2022 -

This is not reel life imitating real life. In fact this is very much real life and not some fantasy tale scripted to entertain the audience on 70 mm.

This is a reflection of what the adult world, that is the elders and the supposedly group of people who have experienced life, have passed on to the younger generations.

It is not easy to verbalise the feeling of ‘angst’ and frustration at having to cover the news story of how a young student of Class IX had to be hospitalised after he was so brutally kicked on the face/head during a street brawl amongst some students at Churachandpur some days back.

Already video footage of the brawl, God knows how it was captured, has gone viral on the social media and what is disturbing is to see the nonchalant manner in which the aggressor/attacker landed the kick on the head or face of the victim and nonchalantly half sprinted away from the spot.

Equally disturbing too was the ‘thin presence’ of some bystanders who did not appear to be doing anything to stop the fisticuffs amongst the young students, who by the way appeared to be in their school uniform.

This is where society as a whole would need to sit down and seriously ponder how and why youngsters, who should otherwise be concerned with their academics and other activities usually associated with that period of life when innocent fun filled days are the order of the day, have turned so vicious.

Fisticuffs amongst students are not exactly a new thing, for many will certainly remember the growing up days, but it is the vicious turn which the physical confrontation took that is worrying.

Elders, parents and guardians will lament and wail about the lack of values amongst the young students, but think about it.

Isn’t it the elders and the supposedly mature group of people who have inured the youngsters to violence ?

When it is the supposedly mature section of the people who do not hesitate to issue vitriol laced statements to the media, especially on the social media, when it is the elders who do not think twice about threatening others, when it is the elders who even go to the extent of opening fire and causing deaths, what type of lessons are being imparted on the young, impressionable minds ?

When young tots are used to pursue agendas which should ideally be dealt by the adults of society, what value system is being imparted to the young people ?

Like it or not, it is a reflection of the failure of society as a whole to educate the youngsters and here education should be understood beyond the text books that are taught within the four walls of a classroom.

It is disturbing but were the young students who got into the physical brawl under the influence of anything ?

This is a question which should not be swept aside under the cloak of social niceties, for it is common knowledge that the young and immature minds are most vulnerable to intoxicants.

The incident that one is talking about here happened at Churachandpur and there is no guarantee that it would not happen in other places.

This is the right time for everyone to come together and study how young people, some as young as school going children today no longer hesitate to indulge in such acts of violence.

And don’t let the matter be swept away under the ‘boys will be boys’ cliche for what one is talking about here is how violence perpetrated by the elders of society has impacted on the mindset of the youngsters.

Manipur it seems has failed miserably in instilling the right value system on the youngsters and nothing can be more tragic than this.

Violence should have no place in a civilised world, and the elders better come to the point that youngsters have been fed on a ‘daily dose of violence’ which may have come from the ‘sense of frustrations’ of the so called elders of society.

It is not for nothing why there is the widely held belief that the youngster is invariably a reflection of the elders and the value system prevalent in society.