IndianHistory

  “Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part, I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore, none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet, or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.” When was I last happy? I probably cannot remember. I mean, sure, I was happy for others. I was happy...

I remember reading a story by Leo Tolstoy called Ivan Illych’s death. A perfectly normal and healthy individual, get’s injured while doing some house hold chore. His health worsens and eventually Ivan Illych dies. At his funeral, the people believe it is something that happened to Ivan Illych only. People think such a thing can never happen to any of them.  The condition of people in Bharat is more or less similar. During partition when countless people died in communal riots, many people were smug in their homes that it is happening elsewhere in some remote corner of the country and they are safe. One Duratma in particular brainwashed people into thinking that if someone is killing people, the victims should peacefully die. Rest should not worry and just sit and fast and meekly die. This attitude has largely influenced people in Bharat. When Kashmiri Pandits were killed by the thousands and had to flee their homeland in the 1990s most of the country was blissfully oblivious to the...