Reflections on the non-violent soul

A deceptive cover which gives one a picture of being at a hill station. Browsing through it gave me a totally different image. First published in 1999 as Olives from Jericho it was published in India by Penguin books in 2000.
This book is a collective record of what people are doing around the world to bring peace to their lives and nations. Thanks to them who revealed the richness of their physical and spiritual landscapes.
"In the midst of darkness light prevails" were Gandhi's words and for Anees Jung a kind of compass to travel. Her country witnessed violence wrought silently and deviously by poverty; in the Balkans a violence equally timeless, spurred on by centuries of ethnic strife; in Northern Ireland violence engineered by religious differences; Jerusalem, the home of three great religions, today torn by fear and hatred; in North America, so richly endowed by the spirit of egalitarianism and equally divisive, that divides blacks from whites. The same spectre looms over South Africa despite freedom and globalisation. Mass migration has begun to spill people out of their homes into alien landscapes that question their identity and turn them into targets of hate and violence. We get a glimpse of all these in one pack.
Jung has a recipe for peace, that is, religion. Aurobindo and Gandhi echoed Swami Vivekanondo when they thought that in order to bring about changes one must work through religion. Almost all major reform movements of the 19th century drew their inspiration from religion and acted on it. She also believes that to bring peace you have to conquer the lions within yourselves.
'The travelogue of stories', as David C. Smith of McGill University labels it, would have been richer if Jung had recorded earlier instances of non-violence. Much before Dadaji and Gandhi, there the Prophet of Islam who set innumerable examples of forgiveness and love. Jesus Christ, another apostle of peace, has also instances of forgiveness to his credit. With such predecessors we can still hope for peace.
Swami Satyananda believed western culture to be monolithic and its way of thinking one of confrontation. In the last century they were the ones who have fought the biggest wars. The long list of prominent figures includes Dalai Lama, who has spoken of compassion and love for all sentient beings---- a message hard to practice! Here she unveils his life theme, "If you smile it always comes back".
She travels further, meets Arafat who radiated a natural warmth and courtesyviolence seemed distant. His former colleague explained one of the most questioned phrases--- "Islam a religion of the sword". He said, "If we had resorted to compassion and good will, there would not have been in history the Islamic Empire". Peace in Winter Gardens answers various queries that nag you. By quoting various people, Anees Jung makes her narrative more pronounced. Nicholas Christopher, who wrote the heart-rending poem Terminus, says, "It seemed as if in the Serbian onslaught on the Muslim civilians in Bosnia, I was reading about events that occurred during the hey day of Nazi Germany." He was equally disturbed about events in Kosovo.
In a disarrayed world we have been given a role model, the multi-ethnic city of Mostar, a heritage that blended so finely the best elements of Austro-European and Islamic cultures. Jung quotes a Croatian, "What is taken is under curse, nature is slow but just, it has its own way of leveling the bills". His message to the world is, "Work, work and work honestly".
Jung meets an enlightened Irishman who opines, "I cannot change the world but I can change people who are around me; if there was something that made me happy it was to see a man change." We should embrace the Gaelic word for soulmate, Anam Cara, a person to whom one reveals the hidden intimacies of one's life. It is a friendship that cuts across all conventions and categories. When a person shares part of his/her self with you it is difficult to hate or hurt that person. This is a positive prescription for a troubled world. The book is a thorough observation of the lifestyles of various communities. In Islam, she says, "They thrive in divergent conditions."
The book covers quite a vast area. South Africa, "blessed by God but dismissed by men", had the strength to live so divided! Living in a country where schools were glorifying apartheid, Nomaindia had to wait 45 years before freedom would dawn on her land, not with Gandhian ways alone but with the tenacity of a leader like Mandela, who despite his faith in non-violence called for arms to fight for freedom.
James Lawson, a black preacher who directs the United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, observes that western culture, particularly of the United States, is a very violent culture. Nations have cultivated violence because they are mesmerised into thinking that their life is dependent on strength that is physical rather than spiritual, moral and inward. The United States has a peculiar romance with violence. Public policy endorses expenditure on war rather than on domestic development. The national budget is oriented to research for the manufacture of arms. Racism is more overt, influential, more attached to public policy. He deplores the secret forces that practiced the policy of assassination in the 1960s which prevented the maturing of a leadership that would have offered America a different way. The killing of the Kennedys removed from the political scene two major voices that were calling for change.
Let us remember the enriching words of Martin Luther King, "Where do I/ we judge another individual by the colour of their skin and not by the content of the character? Where can I/ we contribute in small and large ways to healing our human family?" A quintessential Norwegian writer says, "In a very short time we have come under the influence of western mass culture. We are McDonalized. We eat texMex food; we are pounded over our heads with cheap American movies. It is the general European fears that we are living in a migratory world that is increasingly becoming multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-racial. The European Union is trying to keep people out because the fear exists."

Mohsena Reza Shopna is Past President, Inner Wheel Club of Dhaka North.