I couldn’t agree more with this.
I’ve found myself dispensing these kinds of justifications only too often in recent times………and to seemingly broad-minded individuals who I have great respect for.

To Usha,
I trashed the Huntington’s “Clash of Civilisations” too, when I first read it and I do it to this day. I don’t think this is a cultural war……….its still an economic one.
As Edward Said tried to reason in his criticism of Huntington, civilisational identity is not “a stable and undisturbed thing, like a room full of furniture in the back of your house”. The clash is more within civilisations that between them, as Huntington would have us believe.

i feel the way daniele^^^ above feels. when i first read clash of civilisations, i trashed it thinking that such a scenario would be checked before any escalation. but i m beginning to do a rethink on that. maybe huntington was right and foresaw what most of us didnt. i really fear such a situation might arise.

very well-written post btw!

declare a feeling, and somehow try to avoid being branded. I used to face this problem once.

I was the butt of jokes when Bal Thakeray rattled off the “Marathi-non Marathi ” debate. I

also remember being ridiculed for belonging to a religion that purifies houses with cowdung,

practices child marraige, demands dowry, espouses caste, and worships trees and animals. And

I knew that my faith is not all that. My faith is my communion with God.

Religion and faith are two different things. At the core of religion is a spiritual

experience from which a path has emerged. A direction that one can follow to achieve one’s

own spiritual awakening. This path has many components (processes if you will call them in

modern jargon) – the spiritual doctrine is the first. It is a set of teachings which we

believe have come directly from God (God’s own word) and a set of preachings (the words of

a chosen messenger). After this come the methods of going nearer to God- prayer, meditation,

rituals all come in this category. All these are designed to take you closer to your own

spiritual awakening. Once you have reached that point you are on your own. You are on your

own when you are born, when you die, and when you have communion with God. That is not the

domain of any religion. When you and God talk – it’s only you and God there and nothing

nothing can quantify or standardize that process.

All this is the inward projection of religion. Taking you towards God. Taking you to the

point till you reach awakening and are able to go on your own towards your own singular

union with God.

Religion also has an outward projection. It is a way of life, and a way of relating to the

world around us. It tells us how to be good to people, how to forgive, how to be virtuous

and stay away from vice, how to respect elders, and to guide the younger people to the

differences between good and bad. It gives us traditions which help preserve and pass on the

good things to the next generation. It gives us festivals where we learn to celebrate the

victory of good over eveil and to thank God for creation and all that is happiness and pure

and all the good things that have happened to us.

Religion is organized faith.

But it is a garment that you must shed when you are near God and with God – in much the same

way as you would take off your clothes before bathing. It is a way to get there but it is

not God or a substitute to God.

I am deeply pained by what happened in Mumbai and am even more disturbed because I am so far

away from my beloved city and its wonderful people. But that has not shaken my belief in the

eventual triumph of the good and the just over the evil and the cruel. Forgive my moving

towards history and statistics but as a student of history I know that there have been only

252 years in history when the world has not been at war. And these have not been continuous

years but rather days and months of peace time counted together. Humans have used war to

increase their wealth, their power, their geo-political ambitions, and their lust. In the

quest for fertile land, greater wealth, and more women – nations have waged war down the

centuries. We have an inclination towards violence. I am a firm believer in evolution and I

believe that nations needed violence to wage war and they needed warriors who became

victorious and had more chances to mate and breed than the peace loving types. But when

nations settled down to a prosperous and lazy life there were also the peaceful makers of

art and poetry and music that were encouraged and were given chances to mate and leave

offspring. Humanity’s future has hung between these two evolutions. By the way, I think the

thinkers and the preachers are the rarest breed and most of them didn’t seem interested in

breeding and mating anyway and that’s why we have so few of them. We are living in very

peaceful times, and death has ceased to be commonplace and therefore it surprises us and

makes headlines. Even a solitary murder makes headlines. History tells us that over 62

million people died in World War 2 (about 2.5 % of the world’s population at that time) and

about 500,000 people died during the partition of India (mostly in Punjab which is why

Gandhi is special because Gandhi was in Bengal where the fighting stopped when he went

there) about 3 million people were killed by Pakistani armed forces and up to 200,000 women

raped in what lead to the Bangladesh Liberation War in which India intervened. In addition

to this we have had dictators who seem to have competed against each other for killing

people in their regime. Cambodia’s dictator Pol Pot leads the list with even the most

reasonable estimates putting the number of people killed in his regime at 1.4 million

between 1976 and 1979. (We are not including Hitler whose killings are already counted in

World War 2. ) Josef Stalin is also another figure who lost count of how many were killed.

Even the most stingy estimates say that he may have ordered about 800,000 to 1.5 million

exceutions alone and we are not talking of those who died from starvation in Siberian

prisons. Idi Amin may have been responsible for upto 300,000 deaths, and Saddam Hussain is

estimated to have executed 61,000 people in Bahdad alone. His count ranges between 300,000

to 500,000 so we may have a photo finish here. Slobodan Milosevic who was probably the only

dictator who was tried in a court and imprisoned for genocide – was accused of being

responsible for the killing of 7,000 people. That’s as far as justice can get. Sometimes

killings get out of hand and cannot be attributed to one person alone but the general mayhem

that prevails during that time. About 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in

Rwanda by Hutus within a span of 100 days in 1994 while the world did nothing. The ongoing

attempts by Sudan to stop the insurgency in one of its provinces Darfur is estimated to have

already taken 2 million lives and the problem is ongoing. Hey do you want me to go on? The

list is not yet over and we are just talking about the 20th century only. We have yet to go

over to Vietnam, Indo-china, Congo, the Iran-Iraq war, burma, and so on. Now you know why

the world is still not taking notice of the Kashmir problem? (By the way the Kashmir problem

has seen over 45,000 killings since 1989)

So the point I want to make is that Humanity has generally been violent and killings have

been commonplace. More often than not religion has been used for exactly the wrong purposes.

The first person to probably recognize the motivating power of religion was Constantine who

saw Christianity as an opportunity and an excuse to unify all the vast regions of his empire

and to use it as a means of expansion of his boundaries. The crusades were also wars fought

under the motivation of religion. The Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, was another example of

nothing but using religion as an excuse to plunder wealth. Make no mistake, the easiest

thing to do is to awaken people to religious camaraderie. Tell any Hindu that Hindu women

are being raped in Kashmir, and being kidnapped and forcibly converted in Pakistan and even

the most softspoken guy will be aroused to hatred. Publish in a foreign newspaper that

Christain missionaries are being martyred by barbaric Hindus in India and even the most

educated people in the West will be stirred. The same goes for Muslims who will not be told

that the Iran Iraq war led to the death of 1.5 million iranian Muslims and about 650, 000

Iraqi Muslims between 1980 and 1988. Saddam also took a $14 billion loan from Kuwait which

led to a financial crisis that led to Saddam invading Kuwait in 1990 and the start of the

Gulf War. All these wars also used Jihad for inspiring Muslims to kill one another. The same

goes for the internal wars in Somalia (still going on toll till now is 450,000) and

Afghanistan (at least 50,000 dead). Here too Muslims were asked to wage a holy war against

Muslims.

So we now know what the coercive power of a virtuous war can be. Crusade, Jihad, Dharma Yudh

- all these concepts voo people to make the ultimate attempt to struggle against the wrongs

of the world. It is always inspiring to be the knight in shining armour, the noble warrior

who is the servant of God, who fights for honor and the upliftment of faith. Who is a

guardian of truth, whose waepons are bathed in the blessings of God and whose martyrdom is

salvation. A kshatriya is the one who saves his people from “Kshati” or harm, who provides

the “Chatra chhaya” for the good and the faithful. The noble knight is the embodiment of

righteousness (the prince Ram who was the maryada purushottam – whose valor is extoled even

in Islamic Indonesia, and communist Russia) bravery and the power to act are the virtues of

the chosen and this is what we have learned and loved.

Yes Dharma Yudh is the call to act. For Dharma is a way of the stitha pradnya – the

steadfast pursuer of truth whose acts are all the way toward God’s will. But Dharma demands

purification of the self “the man vijay” before the “jag vijay” the need for

“Jihad-e-asghari” and “Jihad-e-akbari” to be together. One must act yes, for that is our

Dharma(duty or truth).

Our Dharma as educated people is to spread education and dispel the half truths that are

nothing but propaganda and masked heresy. Yes the path is steep but we as individuals must

come together for this purpose. Yes we have to bring people closer to God, but the first

step towards that is to bring people closer to peace. Societies must first attain peace in

order for the people who populate them attain the inner peace required for coming closer to

God.

And history has taught us that the best bet for this is democracy. Democracies have rarely

fought against each other and when a national decision is made by a group of elected

representatives, the odds are that the decision to attack will be deferred in favor of

peace. Let us begin by taking the benefit of democracy by being courageous enough to vote

and even contest elections. Let us start small but dream big. Let us improve the things

around us.

And this is possible. I will not talk about Gandhi but of others who have in their own small
way tried to change the world around them and they succeeded. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan – the pioneer of
the intellectual revolution in India, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the founder of modern Turkey,
Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani – the economic revolutionary who is responsible for most of the
economic revival of the Middle East, Mahatir Mohammed – the builder of modern Malaysia,
Rosa Parks – the lady who with a single act of disobediance sparked a revolution, Ibrahim Rugova
who in the face of senseless violence built a nation from passive resistance, Helder Camara who is
the most significant 20th century thinker after Gandhi to preach about the addiction to violence
and the need to depart from it, Steven Biko – the non-violent revolutionary from South Africa,
Mohammed Khatami – the reformist Iranian leader, and Andre Trocme who saved people in the face of death

These are warriors – true to their righteous struggle and brave even in the face of death and hardship.
I want to be like them. That is the community to which I belong.

I am writing this for Sheece my friend and my brother because I care for him and I don’t

want him to be apologetic for the behavior of others. I do not believe in the original sin.

Yes that was the undercurrent I sensed in this post. It is like saying I will hate you and kill
you because your ancestors created pakistan, or your brothers destroyed the Babri Masjid, or
your father likes K.L. Saigal and Noorjehan and keeps on playing those dreadful songs (people do hate me for that).

You don’t need to think the terrorist is your counterpart merely because he has a Muslim name. You are
a poet – sensitive to the voices of the heart and you are closer to communion with God than any of us
are. I don’t think there is anything you share with them for I don’t think they believe in God, because
God is peace and the Holy Quran attests that truth.

Sorry for taking up that Web space. Not seeking publicity. Just kept writing, You can delete this.