Food for thought

Last week, when on Friday some miscreants pelted stones at those offering namaaz at a busy road in Hailakandi in Assam, the whole district had to be subjected to curfew following violence that claimed one life too. However, on Sunday, a Muslim autorickshaw driver, Maqbool Hussain Laskar, came to the aid of his neighbour Nandita Das in a village about 12 km away from Hailakandi town. Nandita was undergoing tremendous labour pain and ought to be in a hospital for delivery. But the whole area was deserted. Yet, Maqbool summoned the courage to take her and her husband to the civil hospital in the town, enabling her to be in the hospital on time and deliver her baby safely. The story – one of kindness, compassion and courage in an exemplary show of Hindu-Muslim amity in such an hour of crisis and mistrust – has rightly been celebrated throughout the district.

The message is loud and clear: At times of adversity and hostility, and when irrationality based on man-made divisions such as religion rules the roost, it is that intrinsic quality of kindness and compassion in each one of us that must rise to the occasion and help establish order and harmony. We are the most intelligent species on earth, and so our faculty of reason, coupled with tenderness of heart, must come to the fore whenever man is pitted against man and violent tendencies rear their ugly heads to destroy the very essence of our civilization.

As it is, Assam is known for communal harmony, and history is replete with incidents in the State when people, cutting across religious divides, have had occasions to celebrate unity in diversity, thus sending out the much-needed message of cooperation and goodwill beyond the stray incidents of some miscreants trying to spoil our centuries-old tradition of ahimsa, our real dharma. The latest Hailakandi example of trust and goodwill at a very delicate moment of communal distrust has definitely added a new and elegant feather to the cap of the State.

Isn’t this the bottom line, then, that whenever violent tendencies seem set to destroy peace and beauty on this planet, and whenever some sections willingly prefer wild emotions or frenzy to reason and sanity, we all must unfailingly remember that despite all our differences we all have the same red blood flowing through our arteries and veins, and that as human beings we must resolutely cling to the great virtues of motiveless love and compassion so that a heaven is established right here on earth moment to moment?