New Delhi: On December 5 evening , in one of the main roads Nelson Mandela road to be exact-of Delhi with a heavily flowing traffic, a car was suddenly enveloped in flames with its two young occupants, husband and wife, caught inside. Other vehicles, passing by, slowed down to see what happened, but none stopped to extend help.

Shoba Kanjilal, 32, frantically gestured from inside calling for help! She was unable to untie the seat belt. One Rajkumar, driving the vehicle just behind the burning car, however stopped, got out and hailed passers by to join him in the rescue bid. But there was only one other person who responded. Rajkumar ran to the burning car, leaped into the flames and struggled for about 20 minutes to open the jammed car doors and pull out the husband. Shoba was still alive and crying for help. Rajkumar moved towards her wondering how to cut through the choking smoke and intense heat. Her half burnt husband also vainly joined to help. But it was too late. Shoba has stopped screaming. She was beyond all help.

Next morning, one newspaper published from the capital, came out with a screaming headline on its front page: “Heartless city lets woman die in burning car” The reporter Kumar Vikram gave a moving account of the incident. If only a few others had stopped in time to rescue the young mother of a little girl, he quoted Rajkumar, the heroic saviour of the husband, as saying. Most of the motorists slowed down but only to watch the burning scene, according to Rajkumar.

The following day in the internet there was a chorus of opinions, some talking of heartlessness, others lamenting the breakdown of civil society and yet few others outlining ways of helping people in emergencies. One blogger wrote as follows with some amount of sarcasm: ' “Why risk your life? Besides, no good ever comes out of being a good Samaritan in these modern times. The police will harass you. You will have to make a million court visits. Anyway, nothing can change fate. If they were destined to be saved then they would have been saved. Why should i waste half an hour of my life over a meaningless cause?”

Another blogger observed rather meaningfully: “We all are part of this crime.We all are like this.”

Hundreds such incidents keep happening in all the metropolitan cities of India and other countries. Non-involvement is a disease of modern civilization. Man turns individualistic, wants his own safety and security and doesn't care what happens around him/her. Two traits in human nature account for this callousness and for insensitivity: selfishness and cowardice. The natural tendency of the average man is not to step out of his comfort zone unless impelled by the cry of his conscience or sensitized by the Spirit of love and concern.

Not only in respect of responding to emergencies but also in reacting to injustice in the civic, social and political realms, the record of average Indian citizen is dismal.

Will you stand up for what is right when it is costly? To be honest, such a question should send tremors into some of us, who are aware of the ground realities. Standing up for what is right has become a costly affair in this nation. A few years ago 12 drunken men threw out of the running train, two bona fide passengers from a coach that accommodates more than 60 passengers with impunity. According to one version, the policemen who were present in the compartment of the Chhattisgarh express just watched the fight and did not intervene.

That Manish Misra, one of the victims, this time happened to be a relative of Prime Minister Vajpayee helped focus media attention on a ``successful intimidation'' that resulted in silencing and paralyzing a larger number of people by a few determined mischief mongers in public is a sad commentary on our civic sense.

It is the silence of the majority of passengers that had made the tragedy inevitable. Fear of incurring the wrath of the bullies deterred at least a few of them from taking the side of the victims. ``Why get involved in an issue which is not related to me,'' could have been the rationale behind others, who refused to intervene. They could have at least compelled the policemen, present in the coach, to act or could have pulled the chain to stop the train. Among the silent spectators no one felt the pangs of guilt at such inaction either before the victims were thrown out or even after the event.

The incident is symbolic of the spiritual blindness of man. He is unable to see that his life is bound up with the lives of others in society and a deadly neutrality towards evil, touching other people, would soon envelop all including the bystanders. The age question 'Am I my brother's keeper?' needs to be answered positively in modern societies because our lives are irretrievably linked together by modern civilization. We try to stand apart at our own peril.

The civil society needs to be strengthened by conscientious men and women if we are to fight against evils such as human rights violations, oppression, corruption, environmental pollution, illiteracy, poverty and so on.

Minorities in modern societies are often in peril because the majority may tend to steam roll over their opinions and interests.

‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality' wrote South African Bishop, Rev Desmond Tutu, troubled by the apathy of the world towards apartheid. Ages before that the Bible indicts people thus: ' The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away , neither have ye sought that which was lost “ (Ezek 34: 4) Well an indictment that is of increasing relevance to the society we live in.