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The death of pilgrims caused by a train at Dhamara Ghat station in Khagaria, Bihar on August 19 2013 is a tragedy. What is appalling is that it was a completely preventable tragedy. What is worst of all is that the people who died are also culpable. This is a revealing incident as to how completely modernity has failed to take root in India. Its worst feature is here displayed – this social failure costs lives.

 

Let me put this plainly. We are in the 21st century and we cannot design social norms that function even at the level of the 19th, which was when trains transformed the world. But to do so, societies had to create new regulations and come to a consensus about it. One of the simple regulations was to stay off the tracks when a train was scheduled to come thru. The express had no halt at Dhamara Ghat station, the pilgrims presumably knew that, but they went along on a fatal assumption that they could stop the train for their needs.

 

There are many things wrong with this scenario but the core horror is the complete certainty that other members of society can be inconvenienced and hindered because you are performing a religious activity in public. This is a medieval conception of societal priority and unfortunately for India it is a valid and much rewarded belief. It just so happens that this time round they happened to be Hindu. This applies to any religious group; traffic can be blocked, people can be delayed from their work and lives, because you have a religious activity to perform in public. All of them would be bewildered if you made the suggestion that this was not perhaps the most optimal way for a society to function. What could be more joyous and cooperative than stopping a train when it is not scheduled to do so, because some people on pilgrimage cannot stay off the tracks for the five minutes it would have taken for the train to pass by? By the norms of the culture it is I who am in error for suggesting this is a blunder.

 

Trains represent societal consensus; of time, of right of way, of social discipline. But none of these things matter very much to the Indian either individually or collectively. That you should not impede a train in its schedule is a simple matter of very little inconvenience. That even so much cannot still be expected in 2013 is to illustrate the complete failure of modernity to resonate in the polity. A train is not an animal caravan, but in the social psyche the difference has not yet taken hold.  The driver tried to jam the brakes, failed, and 37 people died. The toll may yet mount. Then he made a bungle. He stopped the train instead of following the societal norm of fleeing the accident site. He was assaulted and is dead. His assistant fights for life in hospital.

 

The people who died had no business being on the tracks. Brakes are not magical implements that can cancel out the laws of velocity. A train has received the signal to proceed through a station where there is no scheduled stop; the good faith assumption is that the tracks ahead are clear. If they are not, that is a tragedy, but it is not the driver’s fault. To attack the driver in anger and set fire to the train is understandable – but it is childish denial and displacement of responsibility. They followed the social norm of believing their collective religious needs trump those of society. They were wrong. The driver was behind the wheel when such mistaken norms led to death. He would have been alive had he followed the other social norm, equally rooted in evading any sort of personal responsibility, of fleeing the accident site. His compassion or shock led to his death. Had he been callous he could have accelerated his train to the next designated stop and reported this mess. He would have been suspended, an enquiry would have followed, perhaps some punishment, perhaps not, but he would have been alive.

 

And this ancient and ongoing capacity to change from collective feel good piousness to horrible violence at an instant’s notice is another aspect of social behavior that nobody looks at seriously.

 

India has been singularly inadequate in responding to the challenge of modernity. It has simply not struck roots. When the medieval mindset is harshly confronted with the consequences of such belief in a modern environment the demoralization is complete and the only emotionally soothing recourse is atavistic violence. The Khagaria accident is a dramatic failure of our society. Such prevalent norms that disdain necessary social regulations, they do not augur well for the future. Dhamara Ghat is so under-developed, there is no motorable road to it even today. You can’t make this sort of stuff up. Only in India.

 

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He leads the Ka Sangha meditation group, as well as The Integral Space meditation circle each week.