The turmoil in J&K over the Amarnath land issue and subsequently the fresh demands for azaadi (or the right to join Pakistan) by a section of the people in Kashmir, have led many of us to state our positions openly for the first time. The opinions being expressed are both disturbing and strangely satisfying. Satisfying, because we are finally being honest about our positions, with ourselves and with others. Disturbing, because of the divides… wide, almost unbridgeable chasms really… that are showing up. From what I see in the media and in the flurry of emails being exchanged on the Internet, our long-held resentments are being poured out in a flood. Anywhere where we can find a space, we are contributing to an almost incoherent babble of words… angry words, bitter words, words that are deeply cynical, skeptical words. And we are expressing our opinions as loudly as we can. There are occasional words of hope too but it’s clear that the divide between people is growing wider. People are even more convinced now that their way is the only way to avoid situations like this one.  

To people on either side of the divide, the other side’s stand must seem utterly unbelievable. While one group indignantly asks, ‘How can they talk about allowing India to be carved up once again… after what Partition has done to us’, the other side is asking equally indignantly, ‘How can these people be so blind? If we consider Kashmir a part of India, why are we not treating Kashmiris as Indians?’

Both sides are right in their own way. After all, logic is only a structure… a way of thinking that easily masquerades as truth. A well reasoned out logical argument looks and feels infallible to the one indulging in it. Truth, however, is another cup of tea. It needs information that is complete in every way. And our limited minds fighting over our limited viewpoints hardly have all the perspectives that are possible within a situation as complex as this one. What we have instead are limited truths, each one relative to the initial belief we take as a given.

‘Kashmir is an integral part of India’ / ‘Every Hindu hates Muslims’ / ‘All Kashmiris are terrorists’ / ‘No one cares about Kashmiri Pandits’ / ‘Pakistan is behind the whole issue’ / and so on…

But when our initial beliefs have been accepted as the truth even before they are examined, the only evidence we will find is what supports our pre-decided conclusion… the ‘facts’ we dig out of any situation.

Okay… that’s enough context. I’d like to propose an exercise now… my way out of this morass. Hey… I’m entitled to an opinion too! :)

Here’s what I’d like to propose. That each one of us, whoever we are and wherever we are from, finds someone from a community that we think of as the ‘other’, someone whose views are diametrically opposite to our own… and invite them to share with us their stories, their anger, their hopes, their aspirations. And here’s what is really needed… to listen to them carefully and to not react. To not say a word in return unless it is an acknowledgement that we have heard and understood what they are trying to say to us. Strong reactions will, of course, come up within us when we hear things that are distinctly uncomfortable… accusations, sarcasm, cynicism, bitterness, even hatred may come up in these stories that we hear. They may shock us deeply and provoke our own long-held resentments to build up towards eruption.

Here’s the catch…

Can we do something radical in that moment… can we choose a different path from the one we’re used to walking on? Can we place ourselves in the others’ shoes, just for a brief while, and let our resentments die a natural death in the light of empathy?

Why listen without reacting?

Being Indian, Pakistani or Kashmiri is only one of our identities. We are also male or female or genders in-between; we are Tamils and Bengalis and Gujaratis and Punjabis (among other regional identities); we are Asians; we are accountants and writers and doctors and artists, journalists and chefs, tailors and rock musicians, policemen and poets, politicians and programmers… we are the ones who make each other’s lives comfortable. Aren’t we short, aren’t we tall; aren’t we thin, fat, big and small; we’re dark and white and wheatish and fair, our religious diversity leaves nothing to spare. Each and every one of these… ethnicity, religion, culture, physiology, professions, region, nationality… is just one identity we hold among many others.

But before we get carried away by our differences, let us remember that we share some things too… we are all citizens of the same world. We are connected undeniably by our humanness. And let’s not forget that we humans are just a little strand in the whole web of life… a distant cousin to the chimpanzee, future food for the worms, and made up of atoms that were once stardust.

Listening to the ‘other’ solely as Indians, we may risk misunderstanding what it means to be a person from another country, another culture. Our notions of Indianness, whatever they are, will limit us. If I listen as a Hindu, my capacity to listen to a person from another religion will inevitably come up against a wall… my own idea of where Hinduism stops and some other religion begins. But the moment we choose to listen as human beings, these differences fade away… because to be human includes every last bit of this magnificent diversity of cultures, nationalities, religions, ethnicities, etc.

Anyway, coming back to our exercise, listening to the ‘other’ becomes easier, more comfortable… because they are no longer ‘the other’. In a moment of great clarity, we realize we are both human and not just an assorted mish-mash of identities. And being human is all that matters. We will be listening from a much wider identity, one that embraces us both and not one that separates us.  

The process of being listened to quietly allows each side the opportunity to openly share its resentments in a non-judgmental space. This act can free up a whole lot of our energy. And only when our energy is freed up from dealing with these toxic thoughts, can we think of engaging in any kind of constructive dialogue. Think about it. Why are our newspapers and magazines filled with vitriolic letters advocating everything from stronger anti-terrorism laws to complete genocide of the ‘other’? On every side, there are those with a low tolerance level of the ‘other’ who are ready to ‘fight till the finish’. But unfortunately for us, there is no ‘finish’ line. Each new generation, fed on angry memories, simply carries on this endless cycle of violence. Think India-Pakistan over Kashmir, think Israel-Palestine, think of the ongoing ‘war against terror’.  

Why bother with any of this?

For decades now, we’ve stubbornly chosen to engage with each other as Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Muslims, Kashmiris and non-Kashmiris… some of the more limited identities we can find within ourselves. And we can all see where this has led us. Honestly, I’m quite tired of vehemently defending my position to someone who feels his position is equally if not more legitimate. You and I may just be trading words. Unfortunately, there are others who are more than willing to trade bullets. And in these moments of complete madness, innocents lose everything they hold dear. I include everyone who has lost family members, property, security, peace of mind, and their right to their way of life, in this group.

How about trying something new for a change… engaging with each other from what we share… our humanness? Instead of sitting across a table trying to prevail over the other’s point of view, think of it as sitting side by side looking at the same thing telling each other what we see… to share our unique perspective with each other so that each of us has two distinct ways of looking at the same thing. This process, when done with the willingness to suspend our assumptions and judgments, can make us far more aware of the motivations behind our actions.

What do we have to lose? ... nothing but our resentments, our largely distorted perceptions of the ‘other’, and hopefully our cynicism. We have everything to gain though… real honesty between people, a deeper understanding of each other’s points of view, and most importantly, an opportunity to choose a more peaceful and productive path than one that is violent and seeks to destroy.

* This is an open letter to everybody. It isn’t aimed at any particular community as we all seem to be caught up in the same traps… of assumptions and judgements about the ‘other’.    

We start by believing our thoughts, our emotions, our ideas to be our own. And we struggle with the guilt we feel, the inadequacy we perceive ourselves to be. With experience, we realize that we are just the channel through which these thoughts, emotions and ideas arise and die.  

We are the vessels in which an experiment is being carried out, an experiment about choices. Universe throws stimuli at us… and we react. Time after time, we react and we get hurt.  

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
- The Buddha

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Gradually, our eyes open to the lesson that Universe wants us to learn… that we can choose. We do not have to react. We can choose what we want to feel… even what we want to think about.  

To choose is to create… or at least to pick from what exists. Infinite possibilities exist in this moment alone. Countless futures latent in the choices in front of us right now. And to pick the one we want from these myriad possibilities… is that not an act of creation? Creation of the future, the way we would like it to be.

The present contains within it seeds that we have planted in the past. Had we not chosen then, we would not have reaped now. 

So, what we choose to think about today, becomes the future… literally. Our actions today will be the foundation for our experience of the future tomorrow. Our actions come from our thoughts.

Magic has often been thought of as the art of making dreams come true; the art of realizing visions. Yet before we can bring birth to the vision we have to see it.
- Starhawk

What is now proved was once imagined.
- William Blake

I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me…
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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But where do our thoughts come from? Perhaps from Universe, perhaps from within us. But what is Universe?  

It is everything there is. But every thing has to arise from something. And could this something be anything other than that which could not have been caused… the ‘what is’? The causeless cause… every thing there is, has arisen out of this something… the what is, what always has been, what always will be. That includes each and every one of us. So we are literally the ‘what is’… therefore we are also Universe. And everything in it. And so we are connected… to each other and to everything that is close at hand… and also to everything that is distant. We are connected. When things are connected, they impact each other in multiple ways.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

-John Muir

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.

- Ben Sweetland

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So then… does it not make sense to think the most positive thoughts that we can… about ourselves, about each other and the lives we live together? Am I not connected to you who is reading this? Is this moment not connected to the moment before this one… and the one after this one? If we look carefully enough, we’ll see that this moment is really not an isolated fragment of the concept we call a ‘day’. Where is the boundary that separates it from the one preceding it… or the one following it? Every moment contains within it, elements from the past (our memories)... as well as seeds for the future (our desires). And there is but one moment… that unfolds exactly the way we see it happening in our minds. If we see negative possibilities unfolding, that is what we will experience. If we see positive things unfolding, we shall experience their unfolding in our lives.

Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually.
- Eileen Caddy