Spirit

As a survivor, an individual is the most creative when his back is against the wall. You can push a person to any limits, but to make him break, you must make him believe he will. And that forms the quintessence of human spirit.

Every great spiritual leader, from Gandhi and King to Che and the Dalai Lama just had to touch this one nerve, in order to inspire millions. That, what come may, we will not stand down... the survivor, the underdog, the freedom fighter, the matyr, whatever be the name. And now, a new and unlikely source of this spirit has sprung up... terrorism.

Don't get me wrong. I am not glorifying terror, nor am I comparing Osama to the Mahatma. All I am saying is that the world we live in requires a drastic change in perception. The world has gone through a lot on the last 40 years. Globalisation has brought benefits and disasters. The cold war brought us to the brink of disaster many a time. And now the nation-state more or less lies in tatters in the hands of squabbling politicians. Both scientifically and culturally, we have gone through a lot, and recognised a lot. Information has become cheap. Human barriers are still able to stop material needs, but not facts. Somalians can read about wastage statistics in McDonalds and the Fijian secondary students can get enough materiel to hold debates on the IQ of His Highness the Bush. This is a world, where each success exposes yet more colorfully the stark difference between the highest and the lowest of humanity. This is an uneven world.

About eighty years ago, the Mahatma lay the foundation for the Independence struggle by embarking on a strange, albeit historically the most important, journey towards the sea. The mission: to collect salt. The intention: to spark that flame which could not be extinguished. Gandhiji did this by literally advertising that his mental limits far exceeded the limits of his bruised and mangled body.

Today, Osama asks his minions to do the same. By invoking the spirit of martyrdom in a way Gandhi would never imagine, Osama sacrifices a few lives every now and then to keep the rest kindled up.

The real question we should be asking ourselves, is not what makes Osama and his Merry Men crippled and unable to carry out such lethal attacks, but what makes the common bombers tick? History says African-Americans and Indians got their willies (if I might call it that) from being downtrodden and persecuted. Many Tibetians still do. Both the Indian and the African-American stood down only when they were given what they felt was unjustly denied to them. Listen to the rhetoric from Ahmedinejad's orifice and tapes from Al Jazeera. Count the number of times the words 'God', 'savior', 'free', 'life' and 'infidel' appear. Their basic message is very clear - stop interfering, we are with our backs against the wall, and we will fight back to get back what we deserve. No doubt the message is trumped up to hit the right spots with 'world conquest' and 'Islamic duty' figuring prominently. But it is essentially a message of survival. Does this mean we stand down? Pull out ot Iraq? Or give vast concessions to Islamic fundamentalists? I can already imagine my readers smirking.

The truth is subtly different, and that subtlety makes all the difference in our perception. The Indian and the African-American felt downtrodden and persecuted. If the colonialist hadn't put up signs like "No dogs and Indians allowed", and had seen to it that most people were satisfied, not many people would have been impressed with Gandhiji's self-righteousness. No doubt, there would be power struggles, like any other human activity has. No doubt a few will take advantage of the system, and cause others angst. Any society has its anarchists, and very simply, that is Darwinism in action. On an average, power struggles tend to fizzle out if they do not have a good reason and anarchism is just a manifestation of life and its dynamism. As long as the majority ignore its anarchists, as long as it feels that they do not cause so much bad publicity for their society to override the (good) potential of change that anarchists present, they leave them alone.

The Islamic societies of today, moderate and extremist, feel threatened. Whether they are threatened is an open debate... one that should be debated. We need to get that notion correct. And act upon it, not to quell it, but to make it sufficiently naked, so that the layman can read and interpret it for what it is. Even today, Indian communist politicians clamor about neo-colonialism and violent protesters crowd WTO talks. They feel threatened. Their society doesn't. And that keeps it under control.

There is another leaf we can borrow from Gandhi and King. We must set examples. Every man and woman who wants a change in Iraq and the Middle-East and has access to unbiased information must make himself unbiased. Set examples of humanity, while redressing the true concerns of their society. Make the calls to freedom redundant. Listen to them, and they will listne to you. The costs will be huge, as the emotional repair required is exceedingly high. And frankly, I don't know if it can be done. One can but try.


P.S: In case the disclaimer in paragraph 2 wasn't clear, I am not discussing right and wrong or means and ends. This is an observation on how two drastically different paths led to similar results in inspiration.