Pause for a moment. Remove your political cap. Wear your citizen’s cap.
Hate speech may win elections. It may bring applause, votes, and short term power. But every time hate is normalised, a message is sent quietly but firmly to our children. That it is acceptable to hate. That anger is strength. That dehumanising the other is justified.
Now imagine India in 2040 if this continues. A country where mistrust replaces empathy. Where suspicion replaces dialogue. When that future arrives, do we honestly have the moral right to ask our children why they hate?
Unopposed elections. Allegations of vote manipulation. The idea that winning matters more than how you win. Hook or crook becoming strategy, not shame. By tolerating this, by looking away, we are shaping the idea of success itself. After 75 years of building a democratic fabric, we are slowly unravelling it with our own hands. When the next generation cuts corners and cheats, do we truly have the moral right to question them?
We have almost legalised lies. Fake news is no longer an aberration, it is a tool. Propaganda is dressed up as information. Reality itself feels manufactured. Truth has become optional. In such a world, when our children lie without remorse, can we stand on any moral high ground and ask why?
Convicted rapists get bail and are celebrated. Undertrials rot in jail for years, forgotten and invisible. What lesson are we teaching about power, justice, and women’s dignity? When the next generation shows disrespect towards women, do we really have the moral right to be outraged?
We proudly accept leaders who have fake degrees or no education at all. We dismiss learning as elitist and ignorance as authenticity. We clap louder for arrogance than for knowledge. Then why should our children value education? And when they do not, do we have the moral right to scold them?
This is not about ideology. Not about party. Not about who you vote for.
This is about the nation we are building, silently, every single day, through what we excuse, what we celebrate, and what we normalise.
Before we judge the next generation, we must first look in the mirror. Because tomorrow’s India is not being created by our children.
It is being taught by us.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
