TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

For a country to progress, a necessary condition is to maintain national progress as the main issue, setting aside everything else as of secondary importance. People in general should be concerned that national progress should continue unhampered. They must refuse to let emotionally-driven issues and controversies come in the way of national progress. Without this sort of popular consciousness, it is impossible to have social peace. A story is told about a Qazi or Muslim judge. One day, he had to hear a very strange case. It involved two women who were fighting over a newly-born child, each claiming it as hers. However, neither of them had any sort of legal proof of being the child’s mother. This was a big test for the Qazi. Finally, he ruled that the child should be sliced into two, and that each woman should get a part of the child’s body. When the Qazi passed this judgement, it made no impact on the woman who falsely claimed to be the child’s mother. But the real mother burst out screaming. ‘Don’t kill the child! Give it to this other woman, if you want!’ she pleaded. This is the true standard of love. Those who truly love their country must shout out, like this woman did, ‘We cannot bear to see our country being destroyed! We must forget the past so that we can fully use the opportunities available in the present in order to gift our country a glorious future!’ In national life, peace and unity are possible only on the basis of acceptance. It is a principle of nature that differences will arise between individuals and also between groups. Differences are a necessary part of life. That is why communal harmony cannot come about by eliminating differences. Rather, it is possible only on the basis of tolerance and acceptance. The fact is that attempting to eliminate differences is to defy a universal law of nature. Needless to say, no individual or group is so strong that it can fight with, and win against, nature. That is why pragmatism demands that as far as the issue of religious and cultural differences is concerned, we must abide by the principle of tolerance, rather than resort to confrontation. Accept differences so that unity can be established, because seeking to establish unity by eliminating differences is simply impossible. o Attempting to eliminate differences is to defy a universal law of nature. Needless to say, no individual or group is so strong that it can fight with, and win against, nature.