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| From here |
“Imagine there’s no countries
/ It isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too /
Imagine all the people / Living in peace.” The inimitable John Lennon sang that. I
have imagined such a world a million times. I have written umpteen blog posts
for promoting that sort of imagination knowing fully well that such a world is
not going to materialise in my lifetime. But I’m imagining it for the times
ahead. For a time when humankind evolves further. Evolves towards what dreamers
like Teilhard de Chardin
imagined long ago.
Russia’s
Putin put a prodigious stumbling block in the course of that evolution. There
are always some such people in history. Even the biblical God loved to put such
blocks. Remember the Tower of Babel? Hitler was the most recent successor of
Yahweh and predecessor of Putin. People like Hitler and Putin abound in
history. Present day India has their counterparts and they won the recent
elections too. They are popular and can lead a genocide at any time. It is only
India’s diversity that keeps them subdued as of now. They are trying hard to
pulverise that diversity using religion and language.
John Lennon’s
dream will remain a dream as long as there are Hitlers and Putins and their counterparts
with popular support.
Popular opinion
is incapable of imagination.
Popular
leaders who were born with congenitally castrated imaginations created wars
against humankind’s evolutionary dreams. Saddam Hussein killed 100,000 Kurds in
one such war. 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days by another such popular
leader.
Before this
post proceeds with castrated leaders, allow it to present a three-year-old Rwandan
child to you. The Hutus were hunting down all the Tutsis in the country. There
was a Hutu woman who had married a Tutsi. Such marriages were common since
Hutus and Tutsis lived together for years and years. But the popular leader decided
that the Hutus must have racial purity. Remember India’s Savarkar and Golwalkar
and their present-day followers demanding that sort of purity in India? India
is for Hindus. Yes, the popular Hutu leaders in Rwanda were of a similar view.
They pulled out a Tutsi woman who was taking care of a group of little
children. The children were hacked to death one after another. Remember what
our popular leader’s followers did in Gujarat in 2002? Well, well. Back to
Rwanda. The youngest child in that group, just three years old, pleaded for his
life. “Please don’t kill me,” he said with terror trembling in his little eyes.
“I’ll never be Tutsi again,” he said. But the killers, unblinking, struck him
down. [You can read this and much more in Samantha Power’s Pulitzer winner
book, A Problem From Hell.]
Popular
leaders killed a lot more people in many other places. Remember Bosnia’s
200,000? Remember Khmer Rouge [2 to 3 million]? Srebrenica? Kosovo?
The US of
America played big roles in many of these genocides directly or indirectly.
America pretends to be the saint among all nations. It has a huge cemetery for
burying its soldiers who die for protecting that saintly image. The Arlington
National Cemetery which sprawls over 639 acres has 400,000 soldiers buried in
it. It is the place where wars return home to rest.
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| This is Mary McHugh weeping at the grave of her fiancé Sergeant James Regan in Arlington National Cemetery |
Wars have no
victory. Wars are no solutions to any problem. Every war is a problem. A
serious problem. Created by popular leaders with congenitally castrated imaginations.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteHear! Hear! There are so many words one could say - yet one is rendered speechless at the happenings, too... YAM xx
Speechless indeed. Words become futile.
DeleteThe world has become a scary place
ReplyDeleteReally
DeleteAnd thanks to leaders without imagination.
Whoever wins, the loss is for the individual families of both lands. Our mind is full of emotions while the babies there cry, mothers with blood stains being taken away in stretchers, elders rushing with their crutches to save their lives. Hope the humanity take over the war mongers' minds of both sides.
ReplyDeleteIt's always the ordinary people who suffer. The leaders have all safety measures.
DeleteIf only there we many others who also imagined a world of equality where everybody coexisted peacefully. But alas! That is no longer the popular opinion. Just when the future looks too bleak, you come across blog posts like this one, which assures you that " okay! Maybe there is some hope after all'
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are many dreamers... But they are helpless!
DeleteI cannot say I enjoyed reading that sir. It is as sad as it could be. USA is the key culprit in this war of domination. Russia is right up in the run; possibly ahead but there has always been causality because of which Russia has faced problems. Americans can sell anything from a dead body to a soul. As far as their 'counterparts' are concerned, they will lose one day.
ReplyDeleteIndeed the US is the most deadly nation in this game of war and conquest and manipulation. I don't deny that Russia has legitimate fears. Nevertheless i can never support war. We need to find solutions, not create more problems. I know that sounds idealistic.
DeleteFear and Pride can make people take dangerous steps. Even I am not a fan of wars sir but that animalistic instinct is inevitable. I love ideals too as they are almost impossible to achieve. There is no solution for these people sir. Every international organization that is medium of ratification are dysfunctional organs. I wish too wars could be avoided. Thinking about future Anarchy setups gives me chills. They are going to breach every remaining line of humanity that exists.
ReplyDelete