Its amazing when you can hear about something you live everyday from someone else’s point of view, gives you the opportunity to know where you stand and what does the ‘other’ think about it. It was somewhat a same experience sometime back when a Swedish was talking about India and concentrating on Mahatma Gandhi.
It was to my surprise that I entered the auditorium with these big banners of Mahatma Gandhi and his views, his philosophy, his experience in South Africa, Satyagraha, Non-violence, civil disobedience, all explained in brief. And what surprised me more was that it was in English. He was introduced as the Master of Gandhi in Norway and that he had just returned from India after teaching about Gandhi to Indians. That part of the introduction definitely caught my attention.
He started with the philosophy of democracy and different aspects and his perspectives about the very same. He even questioned the democratic functioning of the very same school he was standing and addressing us. Interesting, I thought. He spoke a lot about the different manners in which people still use the Gandhi way of doing things but in just a manipulated way, but the basic idea was Gandhi way. He said talked about different ideologies, which I think were his, many of them like, the greatest thing to democracy is civil obedience and the reasons why we obey rules and do not question anything. It was interesting when he spoke about that cause I realized how obedient I am (not boasting about myself, but thinking generally). And also, one point that struck me is that its not that easy to question certain unjust laws, it requires courage and guts, and common lets accept it, not many of us have it.
The most humorously interesting part of his talk was when he concentrated on a concept called as Global Democracy, where in democracy was established on a global level. He took an example and mentioned that if that was to happen and it came to representatives from each country, and say, I representative for every 10million people, China would have the highest representatives in a Global Parliament with 132, India following with 116, next will be USA with 30 and he reached Norway, which will have 0. He made most of the people sitting in that auditorium think about who controls all of us in this world, when it comes to business, arms, trade, etc. Minorities suffer, whether regionally, nationally and even internationally. He made me think about a tag which my country proudly holds, ‘’The world’s largest democracy’’… Do we really have a democratic functioning or do we just talk about it and it’s there just at the outer level?
Something which I carried myself back from his talk was one specific sentence he emphasized on, its easier to critise something, presenting different alternatives is what is important and needs to be concentrated upon. Something I am thinking about.
I waited eagerly for the next speaker, cause he was someone who has with him memories he says were the most painful ever. He is from Rwanda and works with the International Tribunal for Rwanda situated in Arusha, Tanzania, which is dealing with the presecution of those convicted during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He grabbed my attention more cause I had dome a project, 2 months back, about Rwanda and the genocide. He gave us the general idea of the tribunal and the way it functions and constituents and then moved ahead to his personal testimony of working in the Tribunal itself. He referred to himself as an international; citizen’ who withdrew himself from the tag of being a Rwandan during the trial. He was honest in confessing that it was not easy for him to see his countrymen being accused of some of the most horrifying crimes convicted to the mankind instigated by discrimination.
We explored more domains during that session with the help of a quick question answer round. When one of us asked him how it was after the killings which left 800000 million dead in just 100 days, he said that after that massacre, everyone was ‘hopeful’. He mentioned the fact that after the genocide and the atrocities, the country was completely empty, but the people had a hope. He mentioned how there was no money in the banks, people didn’t have cars to go to work, and they did not have salaries as the end of the months, but still, every Rwandan woke up and went to work with a hope. It was a story that made me think about how much a human kind is possible to do. The extremes it can go to – to destroy his own kind, and at the same time ,have the courage to build and start from the scratch, be it in Rwanda after the genocide against Hutus and Tutsis, or in Combodia after the Khmer Rouge.
It was an afternoon I shall remember.
For the very many interesting people I met.
For the very many thoughts that arose in my mind.
For the very many talks and conversations I shared with people today about the related topics.
And for the day when I realized again that it’s hard dude! Its hard to even just survive sometimes, so if you and me are surviving and living a life, lucky you and me!
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