Skip to main content

Peace is an attitude



As the world observes today as Peace Day, India and Pakistan find themselves in a belligerent situation which may soon escalate into a war.  No country can choose its neighbours and India is unfortunate to have such neighbours as Pakistan and China one of which is steeped in medieval darkness and the other has a soul that is afire with territorial greed.  Both these infelicitous neighbours will unite against India in case of a war.  Is the Third World War taking shape at the Indo-Pak borders?

On the occasion  of the World Peace Day, the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said, “Peace is not an accident.  Peace is not a gift.  Peace is something we must all work for, every day, in every country.  Peace is not just about putting weapons aside.  It is about building societies where people share the benefits of prosperity on a healthy planet.”

Peace is an attitude, in other words.  Peace is an elevated level of consciousness.  Peace comes from the heart.

Can hearts guided by words written thirteen centuries ago by a man who was struggling to import peace among warring tribes understand what the UN General Secretary is saying?  When truth still belongs to scriptures that are interpreted by people whose attitudes and awareness are groping in medieval darkness, will weapons be put aside?

The world stands in need of liberation first of all from its gods and scriptures.  Or at least from the people who are currently holding gods captive and interpreting the scriptures to suit their nefarious purposes.

Ban Ki-moon focused more on the inequalities created by the present economic system that dominates the whole world.  In fact, Islamic terrorism is mostly a fight against that economic system and the western civilisation which upholds it.  The fact is that neither Islam with its terror nor globalisation with its greed has done any good to the world. 

We can’t surrender our civilisation to terrorists.  We can’t surrender our civilisation to traders.  We need to redeem ourselves from both.  We need to think.  Think about real remedies.  And speak out boldly.  Cowardice can only create more terrorists and traders.


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. "peace" this is what we all are afraid to loose.
    very strong writing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We have to work for peace. There are too many people who want war!

      Delete
  2. Well written, we indeed cannot choose our neighbors. And somehow I believe that a war will never be the solution. It might sound strange but in a war its the people of all the warring countries stand to loose the most. Have a great peaceful world peace day...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let more and more people realise the futility of war.

      Delete
  3. As we propagate "War is a Crime Against Humanity" no matter who fights whom. Let us hope that we as a nation known for our very own symbol of Peace - Mahatma Gandhi, as able to maintain our image as conscience keeper and peace keeper for the whole world.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As we propagate "War is a Crime Against Humanity" no matter who fights whom. Let us hope that we as a nation known for our very own symbol of Peace - Mahatma Gandhi, as able to maintain our image as conscience keeper and peace keeper for the whole world.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Peace...is it becoming an elusive notion now? Everybody has their own definitions of peace. But what happened to the all-encompassing peaceful policy of live and let live.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...