ALL ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL

The queue was very long and we were slowly but surely moving forward from compartment to compartment towards the sacred temple.

We were in the temple of Lord Balaji in Tirumala. Thousands of devotees go to the temple every day to have a glimpse of the lord.

Since it was holiday season we had planned a trip to the temple town. We were standing in the queue for about an hour. Suddenly one devotee started pushing the people and kept going ahead. I stopped him and said “sir we all are in the queue and you cannot push like this. You need to follow rules and move only when the people ahead of you move”.

He became angry and started saying “Do you think we are standing to collect Cinema tickets? You are talking of rules. I have come all the way from my place to have darshan (glimpse) of the lord. I want to go ahead and be there in the temple fast”.

I was puzzled and said “I agree that you have come from faraway place and so have we and others in the queue. You need to understand that rules are applicable to everyone. All are equal”.

 “All are equal but some are more equal. I have more devotion towards the lord and so am more equal” saying so he went ahead pushing people back.

I kept quiet as it was not the place to settle scores with him. Started moving with the people as and when they moved ahead.  After about half an hour we had the darshan and came out of the temple. It was very divine feeling looking at the ocean of devotees silently but with lot of devotion completing their turn and walking out of the temple.

We returned home after one more day in the temple town.

However one thing that was troubling me was the statement the devotee made - “All are equal but some are more equal”.

 

I started thinking and pondering over the statement.

Two words came to my mind and they were Equality and Justice. 

The first part of the statement “All are equal” indicates equality. Irrespective of the richness and  position every person is considered the same as others.This gets reflected in our democracy during elections. Every citizen will be having one vote and by the virtue of his money or education one does not get more than one vote. The fact that every vote counts empowers even the poorest of poor and the leaders come kneeing down to them.

The second part of the statement “some are more equal” may sound negative but it can be viewed from a different perspective. The statement talks of  justice. Again we need to view the meaning in a limited way as it may get misinterpreted very easily.

Every person in the society is not blessed with same amount of richness or opportunities. Talking of opportunities, in today’s context knowing English enhances the chance of getting a job. English is a basic need and is the link language in our country .We cannot imagine a single day without using English.

We still have many primary schools in rural areas of our country where English is not taught as a language and the students get exposed to English only during their high school days or college days. They will not have a command over the language and it would be a handicap.

Justice in such a case would be to empower them from the start to learn the language. It would call for extra effort on part of the authorities to promote English along with vernacular languages so that the students are equipped and are on an even platform to compete with others.

Many such thoughts kept coming to my mind and lot of conflicting issues kept prompting up.

Few months passed and I had to take a train to Bangalore and went to the railway station.

It was almost 8 months since I had taken the train to travel. On entering the railway station I was happy to find that the station looked cleaner than before. I could find  trash bins  kept at regular intervals and the platform looked hygienic.

I was surprised to see an escalator working in the platform. Went closer to it and found that the authorities had fitted the escalator so that people could easily go up the bridge and on the other side there were steps so that they could walk down.

Equality was the focus. All passengers, irrespective of age could now go up the bridge on the escalator and this would benefit the old and the weak.

Few meters away I saw a physically challenged person sitting on his wheel chair. I realized that the escalator was of no use to him. Justice was not done to him yet.

He could neither take the escalator nor walk up the steps. I was wondering how he would go to the next platform crossing the rail track. As I was pondering, one attendant came to the person. He started pushing the wheel chair to the end of the platform. At the end there was a provision to cross the rail track. He pushed the wheel chair across the rail track  to the next platform where he intended to go.

I realized that equality and justice are very relative terms. We feel that justice is done if majority of people benefit from it. There will always be few who will not be benefiting from it.

For them until proper action is taken and they are benefited , justice is delayed.

As they say “Justice delayed is justice denied”.