Life is man's most precious possession. He would like to keep it come what may. But not always; a time may come when he - a seemingly weird and unhappy man - may decide to throw it away after he reaches the conclusion that life is quite fruitless and unfulfilling. That desperate hour struck a five-member family from rural Sindh in the Nation's Capital on Monday, when all five of them, including three women, set themselves on fire in front of the National Press Club. They had been camping there to protest forced dispossession of their seven-acre piece of land by a 'wadera' (feudal lord). But no one around ever thought they would take their own lives. So it was a page pulled out from Franz Kafka's book as the club's security guards furiously wrestled with them to save them from self-destruction. Two of them were partly burnt and a third whose attempt to self-immolate himself was foiled by the guards hit his forehead with a rock. Not that they faked the hara-kiri, they were determined to barter life with death. Later, as the injured were moved to a hospital for burns treatment, others were hustled to a nearby police station to face the charge of attempt to murder. While their month-old case against the 'wadera' is gathering dust in a Dadu police station they are now accused of a more serious penal offence. The melodrama watched by hundreds in the heart of the Capital less than a mile from the country's highest legal forum. How long the 'justice-for-all' will take to travel this distance, we don't know. But we do know that in that instead of standing up to the rising welter of injustices more and more people are now opting to end by their own hands their existence of helplessness and hopelessness. The desperation that drives them to take their lives stems as much from their deepening economic miseries as from their failure to have protection from the so-called guardians of law and justice. This Dadu family was dispossessed of their seven-acre piece of land, their only means of living, by the local feudal, and a case was duly registered with the police. But, according to them, the police haven't done anything to help them get back their land. Having failed to get relief at the local level they were now camping in front of the Islamabad Press Club. But even then nothing was happening, and they decided to go for what is ultimate in protest: self-immolation. While committing suicide is strictly forbidden in Islam because it is an affront to God and there is also plenty of law on the statute book to punish potential suicide-makers there is not much in evidence to suggest that the state is moving to alleviate causes that drive the people to take their lives. What could be more diabolic than people have to set themselves alight to attract attention of the concerned authorities? Of course, the local police owe an explanation, and if found failing in duty should be penalised. But isn't that they have no conscience? Let this saga of collective suicide-attempt by men and women of this dispossessed Dadu family become a turning point, marking the beginning of a massive civil society campaign to help rein in unbridled forces that have made life a veritable hell for the hapless masses in far-flung places. The fact is that beyond the high walls of urban centres there is nothing but lawlessness as the government officials, mandated to establish writ of state, operate as peddlers of local feudals' influence. Ironically, this curse tends to flourish during democratic eras, as local influential people in connivance with government servants in their areas act as mafias to protect and promote interests of their bosses in high places. This cannot be allowed to go on. All the cases of suicides and attempts to commit suicide must be thoroughly investigated to uncover causes that force people to take their lives. And for this if required the government may legislate a special law. Let's pull a leaf out of Kafka's work: "The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc."
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