Harmony

Harmony

1989 9 September 16-17 Harmony (464) In the course of a debate on the social condition of India, a participant asked what the secret was of establishing harmony in a plural society like India. I conceded that his question was valid, but pointed out that there should be one change in the wording: “What is the secret of harmony in any society?”

Whenever people give their minds to the question of harmony, they assume, consciously or unconsciously, that it is a question which concerns only a plural society. But this is just a fallacy. In effect, this is a problem facing every society. The proof is that, whatever the friction existing in India, it exists to an even greater degree in Pakistan, which is not a plural society. What is referred to in India as communal strife is essentially the same kind of friction which occurs in Pakistan, with the difference that in the latter country it takes place between members of the same community.

The truth is that the only way to avoid social strife is to display tolerance. That is, one must ignore or tolerate the behaviour of others whenever they give some cause for grievance. This is how to establish a pleasant relationship with one another inspite of there being unpleasantness.

Whenever people live together in groups, be they from a single community of from several – or even if they belong to the one family it is almost inevitable that, at some point or the other, discord and strife will rear their ugly heads. This being an inescapable fact of life, the secret of harmonious living lies, not in devising schemes to root out the causes of disharmony, but in finding a strategy to establish harmony notwithstanding the existence of palpable reasons for strife. This is what would be called true tolerance.

Society cannot escape being governed by those same laws of nature which, for example, produce roses, but only when accompanied by thorns. And those roses are quite inseparable from their thorns. Even if people everywhere joined in loud protest about these thorns, there would be no way that the thorns would just go away. And even if we bulldozed all rose plants out of existence, with the exception of just one tiny plant, that little plant would, of course, produce its roses, but they would still be accompanied by multiple thorns.

This is nature’s lesson to mankind. This is the way nature tells us to bring about harmony in our society: we must learn to live with our roses complete with their thorns. We must, instead of quarreling with the thorns, ignore or tolerate them, in order to have the blossoms we so desire. As George Bernard Shaw so aptly puts it: “Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is found on tolerance.”