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Global PeaceWorks | |
peace among religions is the key to world peace |
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A Global PeaceWorks Journal7th December:Delhi Peace Summit starts today. All of us are dressed in our best. We have a session at DPS – “Youth and the Culture of Peace”. Eric is going to chair the first half of the session where Dr. Jerry Chang will speak about his initiatives. After registration and completion of formalities, we found that Yasiru is the only one who will not be allowed entry for the President’s address this evening. Yasiru was to be on his own. We gathered into a room assigned to us to do our session. As people entered, we felt a significant absence of youth in the session. We began the session with a prayer, an interfaith prayer. Gayatri began. She sang, with closed eyes, a song “Eeh maalik tere bande hum” (Oh Lord, we are your devotees). This is a beautiful hymn from a Hindi film and it is a universal song, no boundaries of any religion. As Gayatri sang, I felt the same wave of feeling – expression of one’s faith. Fazida, Chad, Piya, a Jain from the audience, all of them offered their prayers, and these became ‘our’ prayers. Prayer has no language, (in spite of having a language); I believe prayer is talk, conversation, and often I don’t need to understand the language in order to understand this conversation – it gets communicated through vibes! After this prayer, Dr. Chang began with his presentation on World Vision. He showed a documentary of groups of young people from different countries coming together and touring around the world and singing everywhere they go. After the documentary, Jerry Chang mentioned that while this work is effective and important, there is a need to add the interfaith dimension to it. Jerry Chang has started his own organization called ‘Humanity United Globally [HUG]’. HUG has a secular background and this is essential in order to bring people together without suspicion. A question-answer session followed. I felt curious. While watching the video, I felt that here is a group of young people who are dealing with one aspect of identity, their national identities. They come together with their various national identities and discover each other during this journey. Is there really a need to add the interfaith dimension? Would adding this dimension make the process more complex? I asked this question to Jerry Chang who said, “Today, we can no longer afford to talk about religion in private, because it has become public. We have to address religion in public.” I felt quite satisfied with this answer. I realized what I needed to do … Other questions were raised. ‘What does the West think of Islam? Do they think that Islam is violent?’ Dr. Chang mentioned that there is a need to clear some of the biases and prejudices concerning Islam. To this, the person who had asked the question said, “Well actually, Hinduism is violent too. The term ‘vaad’ in Bhagvaad Gita (a holy book of the Hindus) means violence!” To this, the entire audience jumped up! Everybody was willing to pounce (not physically, but in terms of argument) on the other. ‘This is not right, this is not right’, everybody was screaming. There was pandemonium. Eric was moderating the session. He stepped in. His eyes were red and tears were threatening to fall. He spoke, perhaps in the loudest of his voice I’ve ever heard: “ This is Khorrum, my Muslim friend. When Babri Masjid was being demolished, what was this Muslim doing? He was restoring Hindu temples that were in disrepair. This is Sadeque Hussain from Gujarat. He has experienced the worst of communal violence. Today, he has come to volunteer for this interfaith experience and he has brought along with him Gayatri who is Hindu, to share in this experience. This is Zainab Bawa. Her family’s business was burnt down during riots. Today she is involved in interfaith activity, trying to promote peace. What is each one of us here for? What are these Global PeaceWorks volunteers doing here? We are trying to help the community in East Delhi in Janta Colony to build their community center and be a model of people working together peacefully. I invite each one of you here to come and work with us, to do something.” Eric had the last word, literally. His words, and more than his words, his passion and determination spoke and reached out to people. The chaos was silenced. We went in for a tea break after which the second half of the session commenced. In my group, we discussed possibilities and concrete steps. One of the members mentioned, ‘This gathering is meant for young people, but how many young people are actually present here? We need to do something to encourage more youth to participate in these forums.” Each group made presentations of their discussions. I find that the presenter has a special responsibility; he or she needs to be careful to report ‘objectively’ (as far as possible) what the group has discussed and be truly representative. The temptation always is to bring in one’s own views while presenting instead of really presenting what the group has discussed. After the presentations, we broke for lunch. I knew Yasiru would be alone for the evening. I decided not to attend the President’s speech and be with Yasiru. In the evening, the group went for the President’s speech followed by dinner. Thereafter, they met with Dharma Master Shin Tao and had a session with him. It was a long, long day. Tomorrow, our work with the Janta Colony is going to begin. We retired! Over and out for the day!!! Reflections from my diary for 7th December: Today the Delhi Peace Summit began. I felt like I felt in the Parliament of World’s Religions in 1999. Ceremonial, grand! But is this what I want? Not exactly! What kind of space do I want for myself and which I can offer to people around me? The best thing about the Parliament was the space for youth. I felt so happy there. Hope flickers at its highest in me on such occasions. I feel that youth (which is really a frame of mind!) make this world so vibrant. Babies have this ability. Babies are life. We are also babies, adding life to life. I feel interreligious dialogue needs young people and their ideas and vision. Somewhere, we have the flexibility, the openness. We are malleable and ductile; we need to rekindle in ourselves the ability to think for ourselves, reason out propositions and ideas, and decide for ourselves. Choice is in our hands. Today, I deliberately decided to stay out of the President’s address. To be honest, I don’t like our President too much because he has given us the atom bomb which I think is a curse. I think he is naïve, though he may be well meaning and well intentioned. I didn’t really want to listen to him. Yasiru was going to be alone. I felt a bit bad for him. How does it feel when I am the only one who is left out? It is a bad feeling. Not too healthy for a group. I may not harbor ill will against anybody, but the hurt stays. He is a foreigner in my country. I may not act as his host, but I felt that this was the opportunity to strengthen my relationship with him. I decided to have a very good time with him. Happiness is so crucial; it is a way to peace inside me. I know that I must have missed something by not being there for the President’s address. Maybe I missed some important words and advice. But I made a choice, my choice, and I made my decision, knowing that I was going to miss something. It was a worthwhile trade-off. In fact, there can be no trade-off for a relationship. Everything in this world works on relationships. Even in the eco-system, it is the relationships which produce our food for us. The lion eats the deer; the bones of the deer mix with the earth to make the earth rich in nutrients and fertile. From the earth come plants. We get our vegetables from there. I feel this is life. In a relationship, we need to give something in order to get something; someone submits and everyone receives. When we came back from our outing to Ashoka Hotel to leave with others, Roshan came out and said to Yasiru and me, “You missed the Dharma Master’s blessings!” I said to myself, “but I think both Yasiru and me were blessed by the Universe."
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In
the next half of the session, we were broken into groups. Each
group was a mix of people from different faith traditions. A facilitator
in each group was to guide the discussion. Each group had to discuss
concrete steps which need to be taken in order to further interreligious
dialogue and move towards the vision of harmony among religions.
As the discussion was in progress, a person entered the room. He
asked Eric, “Which group is for the Hindus” Eric put
this question to all of us, and people in all the groups raised their
hands and said, “This is the group where Hindus are seated!!!” And
Eric asked the person, “Sir, in this session there are no groups
of one religion, we are all sharing together, the way we should be
in our daily life.”|
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