Tanmay Bhat has made enough news in recent past and had got a bad rep, but this time he might just get a positive reaction at his latest Twitter rant.
In an anecdote about his schooldays, he recalled how during a debate competition, he had to speak against “Should India Go To War With Pakistan” but it was his friend speaking for the motion that caught the 14-year-old audience’s imagination.
Bhat went on to say how he held a diplomatic stance on the subject trying to appeal to the nimble VIIIth-grade conscience on humanitarian and logistical grounds.
Feeling chuffed with his performance, he clearly thought his friends would applaud him and see how war and animosity is never the solution.
When his friend got onto stage, he began with an anecdote stating how he had thrown stones at his friend Tanmay the previous day, who retaliated after being hit by the 4th or 5th stone. If his friend could attack him back for throwing stones, why can India not attack Pakistan?
Bhat went on to conclude how the 14-year-olds were moved by the sentiment and fully supported his friend in the call to nuke Pakistan (even though it is a diplomatic tactic that India would not adopt so easily, but what do 14-year-olds know?)
Even though Tanmay won the debate – thanks to the good sense of his teachers – his friends clearly had the audience thinking that unfriendly relations should be met with complete annihilation of the “enemy”.
It speaks volumes of how popular media, schools, parents and peers can shape the thinking of the youth. It also shows how since an early age, the India-Pakistan rivalry has been hyped up that at the drop of a hat, people are willing to wage a war.
Blood will be shed, lives of soldiers will be lost who have to act on command of those sitting in high offices.
India, if the honour of your soldier is so dear that no argument can be completed without the utterance “soldiers are dying at the border and this is what you are doing/saying...”, then stop trying to wage a war where you have nothing to lose but your soldiers.
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