Can Humanity Live in Harmony?

On the 3rd of December, I took my students to the Indian embassy in Jakarta to participate in a speech competition held on the occasion of National Integration Day. We were told by the embassy staff that they had organized yet another event in the third week of November on the occasion of Communal Harmony Day. I have since been thinking over the challenge of communal harmony in India and how lack of social harmony eventually threatens world peace.
As a matter of fact, issues related to national integrity and communal harmony are closely linked. The dictionary meaning of communal harmony is: peaceful and friendly relations between people from different races, religions, or language groups. It is quite interesting to note that communal harmony is an issue peculiar to modern times; it was not a problem in earlier times. In order to appreciate this fact let us look at this issue first in a historical perspective.
In ancient times humans lived in tribal groups—each group physically as well as psychologically isolated from other groups. It is true that there were occasional instances of fights between two tribes or among many tribes, but within a given tribal group there was absolute harmony as they shared the same language, culture, religious beliefs and a leader. As human civilization began to progress, the crystallized walls of isolation began to collapse and there was increasing interaction between different racial, religious and linguistic groups. The inter-group interaction had both positive and negative effects. The positive result of inter-cultural and inter-racial interaction was the exponential growth of human knowledge and enrichment of prevalent cultures. The negative result has, however, been intermittent conflicts and hostilities between various communities. Now, we cannot take a retrograde step and go back to our primitive lifestyle to regain the same harmony within an exclusive group. Faster modes of transport and communications have truly reduced this vast world to a global village where people of all races, religions and languages have no choice but to live together—willingly or unwillingly, with harmony or with hostility. Today, virtually in every country of the world there are expatriates or immigrants from every other country of the world. Hence, we have Indian diaspora in America and Chinese diaspora in Australia. Thus it is not only America and India which are pluralist democracies but almost all countries of the world today have pluralist societies. The question in my mind is: if all these ethnic groups in a country cannot live in harmony, then is there any other way for them to survive? The answer is obviously ‘No’. That is why visionaries and New Age Gurus like the late Osho Rajneesh advocated the promotion of global and international culture rather than eastern (Asian) or western (European) culture or for that matter Hindu, Muslim or Christian culture. The secular thinker, the late J. Krishnamurti, crusaded all his life to promote a new kind of human culture that is based on rationality and oneness of mankind--free from all religious and social prejudices that essentially divide humanity. These teachers emphasize an approach to living that is spiritual rather than religious, which is divisive by nature. Krishnamurti famously talked of the 'religious mind', and went defined it as a mind that is free from all religious beliefs, and is also free from the the pursuit of self-interest.

India--Historical Perspective
In ancient India, caste system of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra prevailed and was adhered to by all so firmly that there was absolute harmony in society, which is one of the reasons why India touched the zenith of culture and civilization. I should not be misconstrued as supporting the caste system. (In one sense, all Brahmins working in Indian defence forces are Kshatriyas and all Kshatriyas earning a living through commerce and business are Vaishyas. The provision of reservation in the Indian constitution for the socially backward people also perpetuates caste system—for the worse or the better.) Here I only wish to affirm that India enjoyed social harmony and that helped it to make tremendous progress in various fields such as science, art and literature. Little wonder Indian culture reached far and wide. Hindu Temple at Borobudur in Indonesia and Buddhist temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia are two living examples. So accommodating, secular and liberal was Indian society that it accepted waves after waves of refugees and settlers right from Jews and Christians from the Middle East to Parsees, Sufis and finally Baha’is from Persia and Iran. Here I am not including either the British or the Muslims, because basically they did not come to India in search of refuge or shelter. The Muslims came as invaders and after successfully conquering major parts of India a large group of them, such as the Mughals, decided to settle here. Of course, their contribution to the growth of Indian culture is too great to deal with within the scope of this article. I am not a historian but it is obvious that the first major blow to communal harmony was dealt at the time of partition of India and history has repeated itself again and again ever since. However, it would be unfair to say that communal disharmony is spread only by Muslims or Hindus. The fact is that for religious fanatics any small incident is a good excuse to perpetrate a massacre. In 1984, assassination of Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi sparked a terrible riot in most parts of North India. Thousands of Sikhs were looted and killed—some of them in the most barbarous and inhuman way. This anti-Sikh riot in the aftermath of Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination came as a revelation to many sociologists and social scientists. It demolished the myth that only Hindus and Muslims are born enemies. One doesn’t deny that in every religious group there are some noble souls who risk their own lives to protect the lives of people of other religious groups. Basically, it is not the difference of religion, race or caste which is responsible for communal discord. The difference of religion, caste or language is a mere excuse or a ready provocation for the narrow-minded people to give vent to their devilish and demonic tendencies.
Today, the greatest threat to the survival of mankind comes not from the global warming or ozone layer depletion but from the divided humanity. This division is in our minds, not outside. The outside differences of race, religion or language is only the diversity through which Nature or God expresses its intrinsic creativity. Looking at this phenomenon from a universal perspective, we can not help but marvel at the immensity of this diversity. As a rational human being I must salute this divine creativity reflected in the diversity of mankind rather than curse and blame it for my irresponsible bigoted behavior towards those who are different from me not as their own choice but because of being born into a different community or place—a fact obviously beyond their control.

International Arena

In the international arena, about 10000,000 people killed in the Thirty Years’ War between Roman Catholics and Protestants engulfing entire Europe in the 17^th century was sectarian in nature. It is difficult to estimate the total number of casualties in the long-drawn-out conflict between Shia and Sunni communities as well as countries. It is the sectarian barriers that underlie the ongoing civil war in Iraq and to a great extent in Pakistan. The nagging problem of Gaza-Israel friction is essentially a crusade-like war between the two Semitic religions, Judaism and Islam. The Partition of India (into  Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Republic of India) witnessed nearly a million Hindus and Muslims slaughtered and maimed in an extremely barbaric way. The ‘eternal’ hatred between these two neighbours today often percolates through to their cricket and hockey matches notwithstanding a number of Muslim players in the Indian team.

Today, fundamentalism is emerging as a global phenomenon which has the potential to dwarf the threat of nuclear weapons. After the Second World War, nations of the world polarized along political and economic ideologies. (The Cold War died its natural death thanks to globalization and disintegration of the USSR.) Unfortunately, the new emerging divide threatening world peace is not caused by political or economic ideologies but religious ideologies. I consider it a retrograde step where mankind is beginning to make a U-turn to return to primitive tribalism. During my seven-month teaching stint (2009-2010) in an Indian school in the Middle East, I witnessed a raging propaganda to project a particular developed country in the world with its ethos as the greatest evil on earth after Satan. Even school children were not immune to it. So powerful was the effect of this hate propaganda that during my interaction with students in the class I saw that it had rendered them devoid of all initiative to find out the ‘truth for themselves’—an essential spirit behind any meaningful education.

The Way Out
What is at the root of all religious and cultural barriers? The bone of contention is ‘my way of worshipping (or flattering) God is more legitimate than yours’. Personally, I see only two ways to come out of this morass. If God is at the root of all this, then let us bid Him a final farewell. "God is dead"—wrote German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his classic work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I wonder if humanity will ever have the guts to leave God alone and be on its own. I have no scruples or any sense of guilt talking like this because I was born into a religious tradition in which everything is divine and yet nothing too sacrosanct to question; besides, there are absolutely no concepts of heresy and sacrilege; nor is there any sanction for religious indoctrination or persecution. There is no authority of a particular saviour or prophet nor that of a single holy scripture. Thus, I can't blaspheme even if I deliberately try to sound blasphemous.  


The only other alternative that comes to my mind is that we include the study of world religions in our school curriculum. It will go a long way towards promoting among children appreciation for the other people’s religions and cultures. This new discipline currently known as Religious Studies or Comparative Religion is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviours and institutions. It describes, interprets, compares and explains various major religions—emphasizing systematic, historically-based, and cross-cultural perspectives. An objective analysis of the world’s major religions will reveal parallels running across them, explicitly or implicitly. The sum total of these parallels constitutes what can be termed ‘universal human values’. Thus, humanism is the religion of the 21^st century for humanity. Theosophical Society--with its major thrust towards encouraging the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science--has made a significant contribution towards creating a new universal human culture.
This perception is bound to yield a new generation of global citizens who can perceive the unity and appreciate the diversity of all mankind. This road seems to be going towards a lasting world peace.