An End to the Unholy Practice of Killing In God’s Name
September 23rd, 2006
To me, there are many broad categories of freedom like personal freedom, social freedom, economic freedom, political freedom, etc. Some of these categories are inherently linked to each other. Personal freedom enables a person to do something positive in his personal interest, family interest, organizational interest or national interest. Rural and illiterate women in many developing countries have been facing the tyranny in their own families from the time of birth of the concept of family. Even educated and economically independent women in developed countries still have to fight for equal rights. By and large, women are the worst sufferers in matters of freedom.
State run tyranny within a country cripples all categories of freedom of people and rest of the world can do little to help them unless it becomes a global threat. Government sponsored human rights violations are often guarded as the countries’ internal matters. Free exchanges of information and thoughts through media and internet have not been able to make much headway due to state control over these windows of expression.
It is useless to talk about a global community without geographical boundaries with freedom as motto and humanity as religion. The countries need boundaries literally to protect their cultural heritage and economic achievements. No two countries can merge without having economic parity and cultural similarity between them. Buddhism could not unite Japan and China politically. Thus failed Christianity to stop fierce battles amongst the Christian states in Europe for centuries. The tendency to preserve history, language, tradition, culture, etc. is deep rooted in the human psyche and it would be a Herculean task to break this mindset.
I personally feel that the greatest challenge to humankind today is the global terrorism unleashed by fundamentalist elements of a particular religion. We may die anywhere anytime without any fault of our own or others in our family or society. Why should one die like this? Is it not a violation of human rights?
Therefore, I do staunchly believe that the most important freedom is ‘Freedom to Live’ and my slogan for it, is ‘Save the Body to Save the Soul.’ No ‘Dharma’ can be greater than one that does something to save the lives of innocent people. I earnestly appeal to all conscious people across the globe to organize and raise their voice as loudly as possible against the unholy practice of ‘killing in the name of God.’
by Jayanta Sharma
Guwahati, Assam, India
