It’s not the first time that I had written/shared my views on this topic. You may want to have a glance at one of my previous post, ‘Enough of Patriotism’, written on August 14th, 2007.
In fact, I started with commenting on of my colleagues blog and ended up posting this here, considering the size.
Clash of civilizations, religions and faith is what we see today across the longitude and latitude of this beautiful planet. From media termed, ‘curry bashing in Oz’ to the incident in Vienna that paralyzed Punjab for more than a week. All in the name of faith, caste, color, creed and religion.
The only question in my mind is, ‘Have we stopped looking at the big picture?’
Burning trains and shops, bringing down the entire state to halt, and for what? Does this help the humanity? Is it a solution?
I love Tamil movies. In fact, nowadays I watch more of Tamil movies than any other language. I love listening to hindi\sufi and English music. I enjoy watching British comedy.
Does that diminish my love for the birth place? No. I like watching our folk dance (yakshagana, from coastal Karnataka), I like the food, I like the people.
And yet, sometime while travelling in train, talking to relatives and few times in office, I had come across people who make fun and demean others faith, language, culture and way of leaving. South bashing north, north bashing east and so on.
I have always preached, Global citizenship and being the citizen of the world, instead of just being the citizen of one nation and fighting over it.
It doesn’t mean that I am less patriotic or that I don’t love my faith, culture or community. It only means that, I respect other culture, community and faith as much as I love mine and would never compare them.
Though many of my friends don’t entertain this and we end up in serious argument, I encourage this debate, because at least, it opens their mind and ignites them to think on different lines.
The entire world is going global. Either the boundaries are going to vanish or we will dig a grave for ourselves and end the civilization. Someday, some other civilization is gonna come up and read about us in their history book, “Once this planet was ruled by the self pro claimed, most intelligent species which was so intelligent that, it dug its own grave of ill faith, wrongly interpreted religious belief, line of controls and catastrophic human destructions and now the grave stone reads “the super dumb species that ever existed on this earth’”
Let’s share the common values. The perfect example is IPL. Most of the Indian players couldn’t imagine playing along with Pakistan players (IPL -1) in the same team. Look what IPL did. Most of the KKR fans were supporting Shoaib to pick up Mumbai Indians, Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket. Now that’s global. This is one solid reason the IPL is a successful story today. What does this mean?
It means, that there is hope. Things are changing. People are changing. The old narrow mindedness will not work. The world is sending a strong message to the extremists. Either you broaden your minds, soul, and extend your arms to embrace change or ignore the message at your own peril.
Some remember the past wound and wait to avenge,
some see beyond the wound and embrace the future.
