Once again India, especially Delhi, the Heart of India, is burning with the Hindu-Muslim riots, and according to the media, both sides are to be blamed.
Aljazeera reports: The violence has so far claimed the lives of at least 37 people and left more than 200 people injured. Both Hindus and Muslims have been victims, with many of the dead said to have died of bullet wounds. In addition to street battles, there was also immense destruction of public and private property over the course of four days, with homes, shops and mosques set ablaze.
OPINDIA reports the other side: Delhi has been burning as Islamists ran amok, resorting to stone-pelting, arson, and vandalism, destroying public properties worth crores and hurting several police personnel and civilians in the ensuing mayhem. While the law enforcement agencies are working relentlessly to restore peace in the National capital, many Hindus affected in the Delhi anti-Hindu riots have come out to narrate their ordeal.
Mr. Pankaj Mishra, the author of “Age of Anger: A History of the Present.” wrote recently in the Bloomberg Opinion: In the West, India long ago lost the prestige it had enjoyed through its association with world-historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, and its moral leadership of the non-western world in the decades following independence in 1947. The more recent narrative about India — that it is a distinguished multicultural democracy and economic powerhouse — is now also up for debate.
Fighting endlessly with the cross-border terrorism, India is unconsciously becoming the birthplace of NeoTerrorism within its borders.
So often does one come across gruesome incidents of terrorist violence that one feels utterly helpless about it. The politicians are quick to issue statements that culprits will be brought to book and nobody will be spared. The religionists and the moralists will give their sermons. And still, more terrible incidents of terrorism keep happening and make a mockery of statements and claims.
People are becoming cynical about such statements and lectures. The explosions of violence are becoming bigger and bigger and human sensitivity is becoming weaker and weaker. It only shows that something is essentially wrong with human society today. It is unable to reach the roots of violence and eradicate it.
Each explosion of terrorism is linked with what we have been in the past. It is a chain reaction–the chain that is becoming bigger and stronger every day. Politicians are unable to understand this, and others have no power to do anything about it.
Talking on this subject of terrorist violence Osho shared his insights decades ago. He said, “Everything is deeply related to everything else that happens. The event of terrorism is certainly related to what is happening in society. The society is falling apart. Its old order, discipline, morality, religion, everything has been found to be wrongly based. It has lost its power over people’s conscience.”
“Terrorism simply symbolizes that to destroy human beings does not matter, that there is nothing in human beings which is indestructible, that it is all matter—and you cannot kill matter, you can only change its form. Once the man is taken to be only a combination of matter, and no place is given for a spiritual being inside him, then to kill becomes just play.”
Man lives in starvation of not just a piece of bread but love also. And on top of it, he lives in unconsciousness. He is sitting on the volcano of unfulfilled desires and needs. He is desperate. And this desperation can be exploited by clever politicians and clergies. They use him–in fact, he is misused by them. These terrorists are poor people: Osho says: “And all those terrorists are coming from these poor countries, with the same weapons that have been sold to their countries. And they have strange protection: you cannot use nuclear weapons against them, you cannot throw atom bombs at them. They can throw bombs at you and you are suddenly impotent.”
Making a point about their anger Osho says: “Man accumulates so much anger, so much rage, so much violence, that nothing short of a war will give him release. So, war after war, there is a gap of only ten to fifteen years. That gap is a kind of relaxation. But again you start accumulating because the same psychology is working—the same jealousy, the same violence.”
“Every man is living in disagreement with himself. So whenever he can find a chance—for a beautiful cause; freedom, democracy, socialism—any beautiful word can become an umbrella to hide his ugly unconscious, which simply wants to destroy and enjoys destruction. Now the world war has become almost impossible; otherwise, there would have been no terrorism.”
Never before was the search so acute, so intense, because never before was a man in such anguish as he is today. The search always comes out of anguish. Whenever there is great anguish, the anguish becomes a challenge, one has to search for something which is so meaningful that the anguish can be dissolved through it. When the darkness is very very deep, only then does one search for light.
And the darkness is really deep. This is one of the darkest of ages: never before has man been in such disturbed, confused chaos. Because all the old values have disappeared. Man is no more rooted in the past, there are no more any goals in the future, all utopias have failed. Man is utterly desperate now to know what to do and where to go.
In the past it has happened many times that a certain value became valueless, another value took its place, it was substituted. One religion died, another took its place. When an idealism was found futile, another better vision, more golden, was immediately available. What has happened this time is that all the ideals have failed and there are no more substitutes. It is not that one value has failed and another has come into being; that is not much of a change. This time, value as such has failed and there is utter darkness, nowhere to go. This is the greatest challenge to human awakening.
