Tuesday 24 September 2013

Hunger

I have been involved with issues related to human rights, for sometime now. I am aware that the world is a hungry place.  A few years back I had been invited to Taj for  conference on abolishing world hunger. Needless to say I did not go.

Today my sister alerted me on the news of adivasi elders dying of hunger in Thane.  I also read about it here, here and here.  I also forced myself to stare at the horrific, violent google images of the 'starving' and face the world that also is - a world of primarily human making. Apparently only 8% of starvation deaths are a result of some natural calamity - we, the human race, can take a collective responsibility for causing the rest.

The point is not - did I personally create this inhuman hunger,  terrible misery? will anything happen if I eat less? I do believe that by eating less, less than I need, I will microscopically experience what it feels like - the gnawing pains of hunger pangs, and this might sensitize me to imagine, how this must be like, if this were not by choice, if eating was not just less, but just not possible at all, for days on end, till one lay ones self down and dies - quietly, without a choice.

 The point is, can I do something, even a tiny bit about it? Can I, as a grown up responsible person, make this a part of my choice? to not avert my eyes - have their starvation penetrate the consciousness of my future actions? Can I cling on to a hope that change is possible, but only with a determined will and lots of hard work? Can I? Will I?

Will You?



Tuesday 10 September 2013

Threatening War on Syria

To say that I am merely 'angry' at all this talk of waging war on Syria by the world's largest bully and its sucking up cronies, is a wild understatement. I am impotently outraged. I am nauseated with fear. I am sick to my soul. Me, a non-believer that any outer force can save us, close my eyes and clasp my hands in prayers, that this may not be.....

Whether Syria did or not use chemical weapons is important. Who used it, and who provided chemical weapons, is also equally important. But one thing is very clear - if such chemical weapons of warfare were used - it would be the civilians, the normal ordinary people, with normal ordinary lives, the women, children and old, the helpless who do not decide fates of countries, even their own country, or play with grandiose ideas of politics and wars, who were the undoubted victims. If there is war waged against Syria, to teach a lesson in peace and morally right, it is undoubted that again the same set of civilians who go to work, send their kids to school, fend their old, and tend their gardens, who sit around and gossip about the who should marry who and who will have the next child, who plan  festivities and share their normal everyday sorrows, who will again be pounded from heavens  to be crushed alive, maimed, killed and destroyed so that some other powerful nation, may teach those in power in their own country, to not harm them - the ordinary people, who have already been harmed, with chemical weapons!!

In the meantime, warnings have been issued to Syria to hand over their chemical weapons in a week...I do hope they have them to hand them over...or can buy them to hand them over. I hope they will not sit behind any comfort of telling " We don't have chemical weapons" ...whoever it was that used these weapons. For we all know what US is capable of..if it says "confess" it is a good idea to figure out what it wants confessed...and then confess it, produce any and all evidence to prove It is right, and stop hundreds of thousands of lives getting extinguished, with a pin-point accuracy.

This is not a moment to question how many innocents the US killed in Iraq1 and Iraq 2 wars, and how and why?...how many others died in Afghanistan at the same hands. Sadam was a bad and wicked man who did many bad things..but did teaching him to "show and tell"have to be so much wickeder, and humanly destructive?? did it require so many lives with such gruesome and tragic ends? Especially when nothing was finally discovered to either show or tell?? What if the same happens in Syria? Can any nation with force, unleash it on any other nation - no matter what? Who will teach US a lesson? to not kill more to punish those that have already killed? Who will think of all those civilians who have not wronged, either their own nation or the US who is world's self appointed class monitor? Why does an entire nation if civilians have to pay a price for the wrong done (to them) by their powerful?

This is also not a time to question who are the world suppliers of war machinery? Which nations have already profited from selling weapons of bloodshed and are ready to kill more when that blood is shed?
Who will teach these manufacturers and traders of killing machines to stop trading in blood money?? Which mightier God can teach Them a lesson - those who kill most - morally and righteously? If there is such a God, then "Oh dear God in heaven...let the living live and let there not be another war".