SOCIAL HARMONY

SOCIAL HARMONY

It is painful to see in any multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual society a kind of social   disharmony which has no rationale. God has given us one sun, one moon, one sky and one earth and all the human beings have similar physical and mental structures.  Their emotions, feelings and aspirations are also similar. If faiths are different, they are for the purpose of variety, not for mutual strife and hatred. At best they aim at unity in diversity. None of them becomes superior by breeding hatred for the followers of a different faith which, in fact, is only superficially different. At bottom, all faiths, like all rivers, flow towards the same spiritual ocean. Emperor Akbar the Great rightly said that ‘there are sensible men in all religions, and abstemious thinkers and men endowed with miraculous powers among all nations. Each person, according to his condition, gives the supreme being a name, but in reality to name the unknowable is vain.’        

According to American physicist and Nobel Prize Winner, Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953) the change from the individual life of ever-expanding complexity as our scientific civilization advances, would obviously be impossible unless the individual learned in ever-increasing measure to subordinate his impulses and interests to the furtherance of the group life.  

But the question is who teaches the individual to subordinate his impulses and interests to the furtherance of the group life. The answer is the enlightened souls like great poets writers, statesmen and spiritual leaders whose thoughts and ideas have a long-lasting impact.   

Given below are three extracts which inspire the readers to shun social discrimination and embrace all-inclusive unity.

FIRST EXTRACT:

The concluding lines of a narrative poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ written by the English poet S.T.Coleridge in 1798:

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been

Alone n a wide wide sea:

So lonely ‘twas, that God himself

Scarce seemed there to be….

Farewell, farewell! But this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loved us,

He made and loveth all.”

THE SECOND EXTRACT

Is a speech by Shylock, a Jew, who is otherwise a despised business man. It is taken from Shakespeare’s play ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (Act III, Scene I). Shakespeare’s purpose here is to create sympathy against the unfair treatment meted out to the Jews by the Christians.

“He (Antonio, his Christian rival) hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies, and what’s  his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and I shall go hard but I will better the instruction. ”

THE THIRD EXTRACT

IS BAHA’U’LLAH’S ADVICE TO HIS APOSTLES:

‘O Children of Baha! Have intercourse with all the peoples of the world, with the disciples of all religions in the spirit of complete joyfulness.  Remind them of what is good for them all, but beware of making the word of God the stumbling block of friction or the source of mutual hatred.  If ye know what the other does not know, tell him, with the tongue of friendliness and love. If he accepts it and takes it up, then the aims has been attained, if he rejects it, pray for him and leave him to himself,; ye may ever importune him’. (Quoted by Dr.S.Radhakrishnan in Eastern Religions And Western Thought, OUP 1939, Page 340.)

In the book referred to above, Dr, S. RadhaKrishnan holds that  Dara Shikoh , the eldest son of Shah Jahan, is the author of a  treatise designed  to prove  that  the differences between Hindu and Muslim were matters only of language and expression. Kabir, Nanak, Dadu, and a host of others point to a blend of Hindu and Muslim religious doctrines. Bahaism stands up for a free religious fellowship.

30^th April 2020                                                              G. R. KANWAL