"God created men, Colt made them equal."
For the state to confiscate and restrict arms is an injustice intolerable to a free man, but one could be excused if one finds it acceptable in a nation-state where there is an easy and efficient recourse against violence, especially for the weaker sections who do not have money or power. In most places, this recourse is The Police.
In India, guns are de facto legal and affordable only for the rich and connected. To add injury to this insult, the police usually side with the rich and connected and shoo away or beat up anyone who dares to think otherwise.
And since the police is worthless to a common man, one might think that after all the courts will be fair. That assumption too is badly trampled as soon as one tries to litigate against the state or against the powerful. In the rare case that there is a just verdict, the powerful keep appealing, finality is elusive, and as they say, the process is the punishment.
For a common man or woman in India, a region replete with injustice, illegality and corruption, not only is there no recourse to arms, but there is no recourse to law enforcement, and there is no recourse to the courts.
People might say the United States is corrupt too, and the powerful have their advantages, but it is head and shoulders above a third-world hellhole like India when it comes to the right to bear arms, the right to approach the police, and the right to a fair trial.
People might want to leave India for many reasons, but I left India to escape this tangible sense of being helpless in the face of aggravations. I do not wish to approach a well-connected bureaucrat, and to stand before him, and to lower my dignity and beg for his favors to do something that should be done as a matter of course.
For those who cannot leave India, my advice is to lay low politically, and not be brutalized by the state. You cannot do much as an individual, and you should try this perilous path of being a lone-wolf reformer only if you have no other ambition in life, especially that of living a free, peaceful and intellectual life.
If you wish to consider joining a mainstream or alternative political party, remember that the political parties are a reflection of India at large: corrupt, brutal, nepotistic, opportunistic. You will have to kiss the feet of men like Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi or Amit Shah or Arvind Kejriwal, or Mr Vijay. That may not be abhorrent to you, but it is to me.
I find it increasingly true to say that though I love many things that have happened in India (especially as it relates to some forms of music and literature and philosophy), I hate what it has become. It is an ugly, dysfunctional and despotic region, and I feel fortunate that I am no longer trapped in it.
