Channel Destructive

May 9, 2002, 11.43pm IST
KAILASH VAJPEYI.


Try defining pain, and you’ll find that no single term can explain the true nature of pain. Try and describe the symptoms of good health and you will still get a superficial answer based on medical tests. This being so, it is even more difficult to pinpoint what exactly governs human consciousness. The task becomes all the more tricky when a particular religion is sought to be used as a yardstick. The recent killings in the land of the Mahatma, the apostle of peace and non- violence, raises a very serious question. Is human consciousness being governed by the tenets of a few religious texts or is it capable of transcending all barriers for the sake of universal brotherhood?

Food, sex and territory are the three basic drives behind man’s aggressive behaviour, which manifests itself through torturing and killing the innocent, weak and vulnerable segments of society. Human beings have sought to dominate over their fellowmen for as long as we can remember. Men have always tortured and oppressed women. White men have dominated coloured people. Christians have killed Jews. Jews and Muslims are fighting all the time. Hindus have a long history of wars going back to the time of the Mahabharata.

Despite the advancement of science, people continue to fight on national, religious or racial criteria. If we try to analyse the cause of conflict among people, we find age-old prejudices that have conditioned our minds to hate others on the basis of economics, religious faith or political beliefs. Since we are afraid of being left alone, we accept any ideology, whereas pure spirituality is open-ended. Soren Kierkegaard, the propounder of existentialism, calls this fear, anguish. The Anguish of Abraham. We all know the story of Abraham, which led to the birth of monotheism. Although pre-Socratic philosophy was naturalistic, culminating in atomism of Democritus and the ethical epistemology of Sophists — and by the time Anesidimus, first century sceptic philosopher and the follower of Plato’s Academy died, monotheism had already found space in the Western hemisphere.

Monotheism is God-centred in contrast to soul-centred schools of thought. Monotheism believed in revelation, whereas spiritualists believed in the realisation of the supra-soul. But all philosophic systems have failed to change the basic nature of man. In the beginning of the 20th century, the world’s population was only one and a half billion. Now it has crossed the six billion mark. Due to rapid urbanisation, only one-third of forests are left to maintain the oxygen level of the environment.

Sociologists like Dr Ronartz have observed that individuals tend to become more violent when they live in utter isolation or in extreme congestion. Stress, according to sociologists, is one factor that aggravates violence in human behaviour. People living with continually mounting stress tend to lose their mental balance. That means irrational decisions can be made by seemingly normal people under stress.

In an organised gang war, where individual will does not seem to carry any weight and killing is justified in the name of unity or power politics, the instinctive bid for survival, rather than any other consideration appears to be the only activating force. It is a vicious circle and to a detached observer of such historical processes, dicta like: ‘‘Man is the only being who can surpass his instincts’’, may sound hollow. But not in case of Mahatma Gandhi who said: ‘‘An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind’’.

If people can get together in order to perpetrate violence, surely similar cooperation can be elicited to achieve peace initiatives? This was much in evidence on the 27th of April, 2002, when hundreds of people gathered to re-invent Gandhi in these disturbed times. Poets, artists, thinkers and politicians gathered to speak Gandhi’s language. While conducting this programme for the Gandhi Smriti, this author found an oasis of peace in the Mahatma’s prayer:

‘‘Man’s need for prayer is as great as his need for bread. As food is necessary for the body, prayer is necessary for the soul. I have not a shadow of doubt that the strife and quarrels with which our atmosphere is so full today are due to the absence of the spirit of true prayer. True prayer never goes unanswered.

‘‘This universe of sentient beings is governed by a law. When we pray to the law, we simply yearn after knowing the law and obeying it, and become what we yearn after... Prayer is essential for progress of life... The necessity of prayer is a matter of universal experience. Prayer is the greatest binding force making for the solidarity and oneness of the human family’’.