Nahari: I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Nahari: Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own.
Gandhi: Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.
Those lines are of course from the film ‘Gandhi’.
If you want to show love of faith, of nation, walk the steps of Lord Ram, and eradicate slavery in India. Silence. Eradicate attacks on women. Silence. End child poverty. Silence. True leadership would say at this critical time, ‘arise my fellow Indian, turn not upon each other, but let us commit to ending child poverty for every child regardless of faith in India by 2020. Let us commit to this now, in the week a 2 year old child was raped. Let us unite under this banner. What use a sacred animal, when our own children and women are not held sacred?
Human rights are on the agenda as the Chinese Premier visits the UK. I write from India where the right in issue is the right to eat beef.
In Britain virtually all laws are based on the ‘harm principle’ which is the essence of Western liberalism; that only those things which ‘harm’ others should be criminalised. Of course that leaves the issue what is ‘harm’? Physical harm is easy. But what about emotional harm? Usually something causing emotional harm is not criminalised. Instead the West relies on social pressure to prohibit causing emotional distress.
Why is India secular? Why is it not a Hindu nation, the ‘Hindu Republic of India’? In their wisdom the drafters of the Constitution of India, just like those who founded America, knew that religion and politics often lead to tyranny, death, fear. So both countries decided to separate Church and State.
There is a time to be a Hindu nationalist, a Hindu chauvinist. When my faith is everywhere threatened will be that time. When it is on its knees it will be that time. Just as an army does not need to constantly be at war to prove its might, Hindus do not need to be either paranoid or be chauvinist to show their credentials as defenders of the faith.
In a country like India, chauvinism is the equivalent of throwing a match into a barrel of oil. Now is not that time. When Hindus are in the majority, and so many Indians can be risen like an uncontrollable mob so easily, now is not the time to chest beat and provoke and bait which can in this country so easily lead to murderous rampages.
Now is the time for leadership of character in India. This is not a new problem for India.
And this too is why we are here. To find a way out of hell. Each of us by feeding a life, regardless of religion can find a way out of hell by raising and educating children as our own. After all Gandhi said, “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”
And in the Christian bible it says, ‘there is a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down and a time to build up.’ Now is the time to build up and heal.
