“Light is good in whatsoever lamp it is burning! A rose is beautiful in whatsoever garden it may bloom! A star has the same radiance if it shines from the East or from the West. Be free from prejudice, so will you love the Sun of Truth from whatsoever point in the horizon it may arise!”
We are living in a polarized world adorned with false dichotomy which compels us to choose between a position that is either affirming or rejecting for any event that occurs or any prevalent discourse that takes place. If you love India, it’s assumed that you hate Pakistan. If you condemn the Charlie Hebdo attack, you are not being respectful towards the Prophet of God. If you condemn the Paris attack, you are not concerned about Syria or vice versa.
In the battle of sides, there are people who refrain from picking one not because they are confused or scared but because most of the issues in the world cannot be classified in to black and white boxes which might provide you a sense of security in terms of millions of people supporting your thought process and you getting 100 likes on your FB post.
Once I had a chat on FB with a guy questioning him that each time an army personnel kills a civilian, it’s condemned and they protest but when militants kill civilians, there is no outcry. His response was,“You have to take sides and choose to mourn one death and not the other, based on your politics. This may appear hypocrisy too, but then how do we distinguish between us and them. The tussle between self and the other (Kashmir and India, Sama no need for this , it is evident) is sadly reduced in Kashmir to selective mourning.
At the outset, the answer seemed plausible but after pondering for a while, I questioned whether a lover of truth and justice can afford to choose one side consistently just in order to be able to distinguish between “us and them”, across geographies.
If you choose to be on the side of Truth and Justice, then you don’t have to consistently be with India because India is like any other piece of land with millions of people who will make mistakes like millions of people in Pakistan would do. Countries are not divinely ordained and hence they are prone to error, so sometime the truth might be on India’s side and sometimes on Pakistan’s side and well, sometimes which I think is most of the times, truth is on a side that is largely silent.
I think stories are a powerful medium of conveying profound concepts in a very simple manner, so once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.
“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.
“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
“It is like a solid pipe,” said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like.
The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said.”
Each one of us is like a blind man who has some understanding of the truth but our prejudices blind us from perceiving the bigger picture. Truth is one but it has multiple aspects to it.
We need to put effort and burn the veil of prejudice that have blinded us from perceiving reality as one.
The question of taking sides is also deeply connected with the question of identity.
My rationale for that is human beings are, by definition, spiritual beings first and physical beings second. Yes, we are composed from the mineral kingdom, but that is not what distinguishes us from a rock. And yes, we grow like the vegetable kingdom, but this is not what distinguishes us from the turnip. Sure we have senses, but this does not distinguish us from the cat. What makes us unique from all these others is the fact that we have a soul.
Spiritual identity is the foundation of all other identities. The essential identity of every human being is a rational and immortal soul.
If we identify ourselves in this manner, then we set ourselves free from the prison of prejudice, which all of us inherit from our traditions and our cultures and our upbringing. The primary goal of the independent, unfettered investigation of truth focuses on eradicating prejudice and freeing our hearts and minds from its corrosive impact.
So my dear readers, I bid you farewell by saying that my love for Kashmir does in no way impact my love for India and my love for India allows me to love Pakistan.
I don’t believe that violence is a just way to achieve justice but I equally condemn cartoons that mock any Prophet of God.
I am pained by killings in Syria as much as by the killings in Paris and I dare to say my heart goes out even to the 20 year old boy strapped with a bomb who blew himself up thinking that there are only two options – Either he suffers silently or fights violently.
Will return with the 3rd option???
The author can be reached at samasabet@gmail.com