September 11, 2001 is a day etched in our memory & our consciousness. We will never forget what happened that day and what we saw.
No one in these vast United States of America will forget 9/11. That, in itself, should make every American hopeful for the future. This is not just an emotional point. It is an important global macro issue.
Mumbai suffered a horrific terrorist attack on November 26, 2008, an attack Indians refer to their “9/11”. But their reaction has been very different. There is no memorial to the people who were barbarically massacred. No one remembers them. November 26 comes and goes every year without any formal remembrance of that attack. It has become “c’est la vie” or “it happens“. Today’s Indians are happy that it didn’t happen to them and they have moved on.
After all, massacres of Indians have been so common over the past 1,000 years that Indians have become inured to them. Massacres of 30,000 – 50,000 Indians were common during the days of Afghan invaders. The British took it to a much grander scale by going through village after village in North India and killing people randomly in the name of collective punishment. Churchill achieved a supra-Hitler scale in 1942 by letting 5-6 million Indians die in Bengal because he thought pathetic Indians were not worth saving and because he said “Hindus were a beastly people with a beastly religion“.
After over 1,000 years of continuous subjugation and atrocities, Indians just thank themselves that their families are safe and move on. Until this changes, Indian posture in the world will remain timid & servile despite the economic progress India makes.
And the moment Americans begins “getting over” 9/11, America will begin a journey from its superpower mindset to an ordinary continental European mindset.
Never Forget.
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