Was Manjunath stupid to sacrifice his life?

I recently watched the movie "Manjunath" which is based on events in the life of Shanmughan Manjunath, who was a marketing manager of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). He was murdered in November 2005 for sealing one petrol station in UP which was selling adulterated fuel. The movie specifically deals with this particular incident in Manjunath's life. Two years before (in November 2003) this incident there was another shocking murder of Satyendra Dubey which shocked the nation. Both these young professionals were murdered for opposing the corrupt practices which are very rampant all over India (especially in the public sector). They paid with their life for their desire to do their job with honesty and sincerity. The movie is very well made, it is not like other regular entertaining movies as it is not supposed to entertain you. The movie is supposed to disturb, shock, and force its audience to think and I think movie makers are reasonably successful in this. I especially liked the conversations between the dead Manjunath and his killer Monu Mittal. The dialogue between both of them when Monu is locked in jail is the highlight of the movie according to me. During these conversations, Monu tries to make fun of Manjunath's values and his courage to stand for them by teasing him for his stupidity to risking his life for his principles. He also tells him that everyone wants to have someone to change this rotten system, but they do not want this person from their own home, they want in their neighbor's house. People want the change but not at the cost of their own comfort. Many of us don't want to sacrifice our own lives or risk our own jobs to eradicate corruption from the system. We want the system to be fixed but don't want to make our own hands dirty. Because of this attitude, the corrupt system has become so strong and robust that it ruthlessly crushes anyone who even by mistake tries to challenge it. People who dare to challenge this are so few in number compared to people who meekly surrender to it that it is easy to crush these challengers without even getting into much trouble. It is not easy to be a parent of a rebel or a martyr, it takes a lot of emotional toll on the family. Manjunath's family must have faced a lot of pain and trauma after his death. They must have felt the disgusting feeling that the killers of their son might get away with their crime because of the corrupt system in India. They must be wondering why their son risked his life to stand for the principles he believed in? Fortunately, some better sense prevailed in this case, maybe because of tremendous pressure created by people, justice was delivered and perpetrators got punished. But not every case is resolved in this manure, at the end of the movie watch the names of people who were murdered or tortured just for trying to do their job honestly.

Actually, many of us see wrong things happening around us, but most of us choose to ignore them or tolerate these things. Forget about risking our lives to stop them we don't even register a protest. Social evils like discrimination, sexual harassment, and bullying keep on happening right in front of people's eyes and many choose to ignore them rather than at least register a protest. Slowly these things become systematic and very few dare to oppose them. Manjunath exactly faced the same dilemma, whatever he learned in class and whatever values he believed in were different than the ground reality he saw after starting his job. He was shocked to see such a blatant and shameless act of corruption, he was shocked that even after several warnings there was no effect. Many people surrender after witnessing systematic corruption, they accept current norms and think that one person cannot change things but Manjunath didn't and that's why we are talking about him. During one of their conversations, Monu calls him 'stupid' for risking his life for such a small thing. Was Manjunath stupid? Or was he the only sane person in the insane environment around him? Are we as a society taking any steps towards creating an environment where Manjunaths don't feel suffocated and murdered? What do murders of people like Dr. Dabholkar tell us? The movie raises many questions like this. Recent support to movements like India Against Corruption (IAC) or Aam Adami Party (AAP) showed us how serious is the problem of corruption in India. But the progress in the direction of eradicating this social menace or even controlling it is very slow, there is a lack of political will from all political parties and it seems for voters corruption is not an election issue. So it seems our society is only interested in candle marches or protests after each incident like this but they are not yet ready to force political parties to reform the entire system. I really don't know how many Manjunaths or Satyendras have to sacrifice their lives to open our eyes to see the monster of corruption. Political parties are not going to do anything on their own until people force them to do it. I hope this movie and the story of people like Manjunath inspire many young people who can at least dare to ask some tough questions to the current establishment. Initiating some change toward controlling widespread corruption will be the biggest tribute to these people who sacrificed their lives to clean this system.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]