The LTTE is suspected to have used child soldiers in its war against the Sri Lankan army. In several African countries too, young boys are said to be kidnapped and then trained to fight in inter-tribal, civil and other wars. When the world reads about this, there is disbelief and shock. Can anyone be so inhuman and such a monster as to put guns into the hands of young children, teach them how to kill and rob them of their innocence, childhood and perhaps even their lives, we wonder.
But many of us are as guilty as those inhuman monsters because children are not just robbed of their juvenescence and innocence by putting guns into their hands. They are robbed of their childhood every time one of us puts a broom into their hands too. Or a man who deals in recycling waste gives them a bag and sends them to a trash dump. Or a parent indentures them to work on someone’s land or for the owner of a small shop as security for or as repayment of a loan. To sum up, we are guilty when any of us, in any way, makes it impossible for a child to be carefree or to get an education. And yet this is done all the time in our country by many of us.
Some time ago, newspapers and TV news channels were going all out with news stories about the plight of Rameshwari Yadav, a 10-year-old, who was tortured by her employer, a small-time TV actress called Urvashi Dhanorkar, in Mumbai. Rameshwari’s “crime”?
She “stole” and ate some shrikhand which was in the fridge. For all of a week news channels,which constantly face the challenge of grabbing eyeballs 24x7, bombarded us with details of the case and its developments. The child’s name was on everyone’s lips and we were all haunted by the photographs printed in newspapers, of little Rameshwari looking out at us with confusion and accusation in her red eyes with dark bruises under them.
But…does anyone remember that face now, a couple of months after the incident? Do we know what has happened to her, the woman who tortured her or to the case? No, because the story of Rameshwari has been replaced in the news by another sensational story.
For that matter, do we remember other horror stories involving the illtreatment of little children working as domestic help, which shocked us dumb when they took place? The case, for instance, of the 12-year-old child-maid who was kidnapped and tortured by another actor, Huma Khan? Or the case of little Sonu, the nine-year-old maid who bled to death when her employer, Roma Bhatia, pushed an aluminium rod up her anus as punishment for having tried on a lipstick lying on the dressing table?
No, we don’t remember because public memory is notoriously short. But that’s not the reason why we have forgotten. We have forgotten because there are so many of these stomach-churning stories that we cannot keep track of them!
