We, the people; neither free of fear nor fearless

We can be made to fear, encouraged to hate, provoked to hurt, and to panic. We need to be de-addicted from fear, which is why law-enforcers have a great and unenviable responsibility today

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Are we a fear-free people with some of us who are frightened? Or a fearful people with some of us being unafraid? This is not about statistics. Fever can be read in a thermometer. Fear is not measurable.

This is about the way things are. As real as the bolt in our door, the lock in our cellphones, the double-blind password in our laptop. "Oh," the reader will rightly say, "those are universal fears." So they are. But we have our own variants of that universal phenomenon called fear, our own mutants of human dread.

We are not like those in Israel, afraid of Hamas bomb-showers. Or those in Gaza afraid of Israeli bomb-rain. We are not like Ukrainians fearing the next downpour of Russian fire. We are not like the unfortunates in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or China who face prosecution today and execution tomorrow.

Many admirable men and women across India are fear-free and speak, write, sing without fear. Does that make us, as a people, fear-free? If I am a Hindu in the Kashmir valley, I will dread separatist gunfire, fear plying my trade, going to office, college, school. I could be gunned down any moment by masked men on motorcycles. If I am a Muslim in Jammu, I will dread a shootout in Kashmir that has killed a Hindu for it could lead to an immediate backlash in Jammu making me hide, flee.