Today someone forwarded an old video of Atalji's speach during Sharad Pawar's 61st birthday.
Very true opinion. Gone are those days when political leaders used to meet for tea, lunch and dinner. They used to debate on totally opposite views. Atalji very rightly said, " loktantra me matbhed ho sakte hai, koi mitra hota hai, koi mitra nahi hota hai. Lekin shatru koi nahi hona chahiye".(sic) This whole philosophy is now going down the drain. If someone praises Sharad Pawar then those become shatru for someone and mitra for someone. If someone praises Modi, then immediately some mitra become shatru and some not mitra become mitra.
Democracy has the base of difference of opinions. When one can express a different view freely, then that is the freedom of expression. One can argue about correctness or wrongness of the opinion, debate about it freely. However, when we say you should not speak a word about xyz or you should say only positive or only negative about xyz, it is communism or dictatorship, it is not loktantra, democracy. Democracy brings maturity. Democracy brings patience to hear totally "opposite" opinions and totally "for" opinions which both may not be correct, and democracy gives maturity to debate point by point, about each subpoint and its accuracy.
Atalji very rightly said that, "the days are coming where everyone is becoming extremist, they either become shatru or mitra There is no patience. Every opinion has to finally have base of priority of Nation ."(Sic)
Now political parties boycott tea, lunch, dinner arranged by CM or any opposition party and same is followed by common people.
Sharad Pawar has friends in every party with whom he eats, talks, debates. May it is Gadkari or Thakre, late Munde, late Pramodji Mahajan or Sonia. But he has his own opinion, agenda, and thought process of running his party and nation. He fights with all of them on ballet poll not personally.
We are all Indians first and for a better democracy we need to respect each and every opinion. We can try to convince or get convinced. Or sometimes we can be somewhere in between. However, the open discussion should happen in the society.
Why extremists and terrorists are born? They are not like that from their birth. They become so, over the period because someone or they themselves hammer them with same thought again and again and again. They are taught not to listen to any other view. They are taught that listening or accepting any other view is a sin. As Quran says, "If you listen any thing against Allah or against any view mentioned in Quran, then it is sin and you have right to punish those". This is a thought process to create extrimists by nature.
The right way to bring back an extrimist from the extreme view, is to listen their views and debate. Give other perspectives to them. Teach them slowly to respect every view, and it is ok to agree to disagree. This is the right way of democracy.
Hindusthan or India or Bharat has democracy in its nature. Charcha and samiksha are basic characteristics of Sanatan Dharma. So religion, or caste, or profession or opinion or "ism" are all part of opinion database. What is religion? It is only difference of opinion about some or many principles.
Jews or christians or muslims are actually same as they follow bible. The only difference christian have from jews is they worship idol, they believe in trinity and they changed some rules about eating habits among few others. The difference between Muslims and christians is again they went back to "no idol worship", again back to some rules of eating habits partially, adding some extreme rules about law, among few others. What hindu dharma says is "everyone has a choice to worship based or their liking, sagun, nirgun, idol, no idol, any day- sunday, monday, tuesday ,.. saturday, post eating , without eating or eating with restrictions, no violence or violence for only self protection."
We can hear out each other, talk about your own opinion freely, accept or disagree other opinions. The day we say "no more expression of your view", we are already an extrimist or on the path of becoming so.
-Suwarna
27 Mar2022
