Communal Egos and Inter-Community Conflict

response is to avoid getting agitated. If you lose your patience and get worked up, you will lose your reason. And if that happens, you will not be able to perceive things properly and make the right moves that you need to in order to defuse the situation. Another necessary thing in such situations is the need to consult others. When decisions are taken on the basis of mutual consultation, they involve ascertaining the views of many people. In this way, the decisions that are taken would be based on a wider perception of matters. Mutual consultation also enables you to benefit from the opinions of people who can see things in a more balanced way. This makes the decision that is arrived at potentially more meaningful, effective and realistic, unlike a decision that is made by people who are heavily prejudiced one way or the other. In a provocative situation that can easily escalate into violence between communities one must desist from making one-sided allegations. Instead, one must exercise generosity and willingly acknowledge one’s mistakes. It generally happens that when people see their opponents refusing to acknowledge their mistakes, they get very agitated and seek to take revenge on them. But if your opponent sees that you openly and wholeheartedly admit your own mistakes, their hearts will melt. They will suddenly warm up to you. They will begin to feel that by your acknowledging your mistakes they have given you the ‘punishment’ you deserve and that there is no way that they could or should further punish you. In the face of a provocative situation that threatens to degenerate into a communal riot, you must never try to take the law into your hands. In a country that enjoys the rule of law, if you take the law into your hands you will make yourself a criminal. In this way, you will create two sets of enemies for yourself—one, the person who has done something wrong and from whom you want to exact revenge; and the other, the governmental