2017 was a dif­fi­cult year. In­creas­ing ha­tred to one an­other, ha­tred lead­ing to fear and mi­gra­tion dom­i­nated the year in many parts of the world. World Sikh News calls it the Year of Hate, Fear and Refugees. From the in­ter­na­tional stand­point -the World Year of Hate, from the Hu­man rights per­spec­tive, the Year of Refugees and from the In­dian an­gle, the Year of Fear. 

At the global level, WSN recog­nises that Hate was the prime mover for many politi­cians and groups – from Don­ald Trump in the US to the rad­i­cals in the Mid­dle East to Is­rael’s tor­ture of Pales­tini­ans to eth­nic cleans­ing of Ro­hingya Mus­lims in Myan­mar to nu­clear war mon­ger­ing by North Ko­rea, to Eu­rope and North Amer­ica not open­ing arms to in­flux of refugees and the ten­sion of war in Iran. 

At the drop of a hat, we had lead­ers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and com­mu­nity fo­rums in­dulging in hate-mon­ger­ing obliv­i­ous of long term con­se­quences. With­out a pinch of doubt, for the world, hate was pre­dom­i­nant.  

Hu­man Rights Year of Refugees: The swollen faces, the seek­ing hand, the peo­ple in boats, the des­per­ate chil­dren -all these im­ages of refugees stunned the world through­out 2017.Though sadly noth­ing much could be achieved to al­le­vi­ate their con­di­tion and  re­duce their suf­fer­ing, many coun­tries like Turkey, Bangladesh and Ger­many stand out as shin­ing ex­am­ples of those who have wel­comed the refugees with open arms, stand­ing to the prob­lems such a sit­u­a­tion cre­ates at the lo­cal level, man across the globe bolted their doors.

The United Na­tions has made the right noises re­gard­ing eth­nic cleans­ing of the Ro­hingya Mus­lims in Myan­mar, the war in Yemen and Syria, but the stream of thou­sands of peo­ple ren­dered state­less con­tin­ues. For all of this and more, from a hu­man rights per­spec­tive, 2o17 was Hu­man Rights Year of Refugees.

In­dian Year of Fear: In In­dia, it was the Year of Fear  -fear of the wrath of the po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment. It was a bad year for jour­nal­ists, opin­ion mak­ers and satir­i­cal artists in In­dia. Face­book posts were dropped, Eco­nomic and Po­lit­i­cal Weekly ed­i­tor re­signed to keep the in­sti­tu­tion go­ing, a young artiste was de­barred from a TV par­ody show as he im­i­tated the Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the one in wait­ing. The sad thing is that the cli­mate of fear and im­punity to the per­pe­tra­tors con­tin­ues. Last year, In­dia for­got to laugh or even smile, ex­cept on the Kapil Sharma com­edy show.