Isn’t ‘I’ taller than ‘We’?

It’s said that man is a social animal.

Well, accepting the animal part is a bit awkward for some, but most of us take pride in the ‘social’ tag and it shows!

Around the world people are identified by their names, which majorly constitutes of 'Last Name' and 'First Name' . The ‘Last Name’ usually depicts an association to a family, village or society. We join clubs, social organizations, political parties, religious cults etc.

There is a definite pattern when we look at the basis of all the above associations – a sense of ‘common’ identity. The underlying ‘commonness’ could be religious belief, family name, or a political ideology!

The latest victim of this ‘Herd mentality’ is Jaswant singh. The poor man was expelled from BJP just because the views he expressed in his book did not match with the ‘ideology’ of his party. I look at this incidence from a different angle than – ‘Was Jinnah a saint or Satan and how true is the book?’

Does an individual’s association to a group dissociate him from his own self? Do his individual thinking, logic, reasoning have no right to exist? The people at helm say, ‘They can exist but within the close confines of one’s mind’.
In context of this incident – I was listening to Mr Parkash Jawadekar (BJP Spokesman) in a news channel and he says – ‘Mr. Singh’s views hold right as an individual’s, but he cannot express them while being a member of a party that is opposed to them’. I find this argument justifiable too. It’s like saying that you have boarded a bus going to Mumbai and we all are going there too, if you have to go to Delhi, please change the bus! I say – why not have a car? :)

In my personal opinion, I hold an Individual’s right to exist superior than anything else. By existence, I mean physical and mental. There is nothing more powerful in this world than an identity that has realized its potential. Interestingly, all the achievements of mankind are attributed to individuals and not societies! Who invented telescope? ‘Galileo’. Who discovered Gravity? ‘Sir Issac Newton’. If anyone ever heard – let me know when a ‘community’ has been known to make a breakthroughJ. Even if it did – there would have been a single brain in there who would have suggested the idea ;).