India's 1947 partition shows destructiveness of religion

My previous blog post was about Indian Prime Minister Modi's involvement in the Gujarat massacre of 2002, where about 1,000 people (mostly Muslims, I assume) were killed by Hindu nationalists.

But that death toll is nothing compared to what happened after the British partitioned India into a Muslim territory and non-Muslim territory in 1947. 

I don't know a lot about the Indian Partition. However, I learned something about it in an article in the January 2 & 9 issue of The New Yorker. The magazine article is called "Blood Lines: Seventy-five years after Indian Partition, have we learned how to say what happened?"

The online article is called, "Seventy-five Years after Indian Partition, Who Owns the Narrative?: Literature once filled in archival gaps by saying the unsayable. Now a younger generation is finding new modes of telling the story and finding new stories to tell." 

Here's a PDF file.
Download Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition Who Owns the Narrative?  | The New Yorker

It's heartbreaking to read how the partition was described by people who lived through it and in novels that cast a light on the horrendous happening through the lens of fact-based fiction. 

A Wikipedia article about the Partition of India says that Ghandi was opposed to the splitting up of India. In retrospect, he probably was right. However, for a variety of reasons the British rushed through a not very well thought-out plan for partitioning along religious lines. Wikipedia says:

The two-nation theory is the ideology that the primary identity and unifying denominator of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent is their religion, rather than their language or ethnicity, and therefore Indian Hindus and Muslims are two distinct nations regardless of commonalities. It argued that religion resulted in cultural and social differences between Muslims and Hindus. The two-nation theory was a founding principle of the Pakistan Movement (i.e., the ideology of Pakistan as a Muslim nation-state in South Asia), and the partition of India in 1947.

The ideology that religion is the determining factor in defining the nationality of Indian Muslims was undertaken by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who termed it as the awakening of Muslims for the creation of Pakistan. It is also a source of inspiration to several Hindu nationalist organizations, with causes as varied as the redefinition of Indian Muslims as non-Indian foreigners and second-class citizens in India, the expulsion of all Muslims from India, the establishment of a legally Hindu state in India, prohibition of conversions to Islam, and the promotion of conversions or reconversions of Indian Muslims to Hinduism. 

There are varying interpretations of the two-nation theory, based on whether the two postulated nationalities can coexist in one territory or not, with radically different implications. One interpretation argued for sovereign autonomy, including the right to secede, for Muslim-majority areas of the Indian subcontinent, but without any transfer of populations (i.e., Hindus and Muslims would continue to live together).

A different interpretation contends that Hindus and Muslims constitute "two distinct and frequently antagonistic ways of life and that therefore they cannot coexist in one nation." In this version, a transfer of populations (i.e., the total removal of Hindus from Muslim-majority areas and the total removal of Muslims from Hindu-majority areas) was a desirable step towards a complete separation of two incompatible nations that "cannot coexist in a harmonious relationship."

Opposition to the theory has come from two sources. The first is the concept of a single Indian nation, of which Hindus and Muslims are two intertwined communities. This is a founding principle of the modern, officially-secular Republic of India. Even after the formation of Pakistan, debates on whether Muslims and Hindus are distinct nationalities or not continued in that country as well. The second source of opposition is the concept that while Indians are not one nation, neither are the Muslims or Hindus of the subcontinent, and it is instead the relatively homogeneous provincial units of the subcontinent which are true nations and deserving of sovereignty; the Baloch have presented this view, Sindhi, and Pashtun sub-nationalities of Pakistan and the Assamese  and Punjabi sub-nationalities of India.

In the end, religion was the primary criterion for dividing India into Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Of course, many Muslims still live in India, and I assume some Hindus, Sikhs, and members of other religions live in Pakistan and what is now Bangladesh. 

What's beyond sad is how communities where Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs used to live together harmoniously were afflicted by massive outbreaks of violence, which led to one of the largest migrations in human history. Here's how The New Yorker story by Perul Sehgal starts out.

Before it was an edict, and a death sentence, it was a rumor. To many, it must have seemed improbable; I imagine my grandmother, buying her vegetables at the market, settling her baby on her hip, craning to hear the news—a border, where? Two borders, to be exact.

On the eve of their departure, in 1947, after more than three hundred years on the subcontinent, the British sliced the land into a Hindu-majority India flanked by a Muslim-majority West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), a thousand miles apart. The boundaries were drawn up in five weeks by an English barrister who had famously never before been east of Paris; he flew home directly afterward and burned his papers. The slash of his pen is known as Partition.

A tidy word, “Partition.” Amid what the Punjabis call the raula—the “uproar”—the region convulsed with violence, Hindus and Sikhs on one side, Muslims on the other. Entire villages were massacred. Neighbors turned on each other. It’s estimated that a million people were killed, and that seventy-five thousand women and girls were abducted and raped, a third of them under the age of twelve. Millions of refugees fled in one of the largest and most rapid migrations in history.

“Blood trains” crisscrossed the fresh border, carrying silent cargo—passengers slaughtered during the journey. Cities transformed into open-air refugee camps, like the one in Delhi to which my grandmother escaped in the night, alone with her children, feeding the baby opium, the story goes, so he would not cry.

Bhisham Sahni’s “Tamas,” a 1973 Hindi novel set in that period, brings such a camp to life. The exhausted refugees are greeted by a functionary of the Relief Committee with the unpropitious nickname Statistics Babu. “I want figures, only figures, nothing but figures,” he instructs. The refugees mill around him, unhearing. They weep, stare blankly. They repeat, in exasperating detail, every step of their journeys. “Why don’t you understand?” Statistics Babu pleads. “I am not here to listen to the whole ‘Ramayana.’ Give me figures—how many dead, how many wounded, how much loss of property and goods. That is all.”

Is that where the story lies? What do “figures, only figures” convey of the full horror and absurdity of 1947? Of a border that cut through forests, families, and shrines, that saw wild animals apportioned between the two countries and historical artifacts snapped in half?

In “Tamas,” the testimonies of the survivors reveal all that records omit and conceal. A refugee is desperate to recover his wife’s gold bangles: won’t Statistics Babu help him? Those bangles still circle his wife’s wrists, however, and she lies at the bottom of a well. It is a detail perhaps lifted from the case of the real-life village of Thoa Khalsa, now in Pakistan, where almost a hundred Sikh women drowned themselves and their children.

We don’t have the figures for women killed by their own families or forced to kill themselves in the name of protecting their honor. There are no records of those who died of heartbreak. My family migrated from an area not far from Thoa Khalsa. Only my great-uncle remained; he lay beheaded in the courtyard of his home. Three months later, his wife died—of grief, some say. Their children were scattered. There are no firm figures available for orphaned children, or for children abandoned along the journey because they were too small to walk quickly enough.

What I find difficult to understand, from my perspective here in the United States, is how it can be that India is still convulsed by Hindu-Muslim violence, with Prime Minister Modi's political party being devoted to Hindu nationalism.

Don't the people of India realize that the horrors of the Indian Partition must never be repeated, even on a much smaller scale? The United States has had to come to grips with the horror of slavery and the injustices African-Americans have had to deal with from 1619 to the present.

But at least there's an almost universal consensus that discrimination against Blacks has to be a thing of the past, though there's a lot of debate about how this is to be achieved. In India, though, my understanding is that Modi and his political party are dedicated to the proposition that Muslims are second-class citizens, and that India is basically a Hindu nation.

Sure, we have Christian nationalists in the United States. However, they are a fringe political movement.  Some Christian nationalists get elected to political positions, but they're nowhere close to controlling the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party, which controls the presidency and Senate, totally rejects Christian nationalism.

Which is why I worry about India. If Modi retains power in the 2024 elections, which recent polling says seems likely, Hindu nationalism will have even more of a foothold in India. That strikes me as really unfortunate, if it happens.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

“India's 1947 partition shows destructiveness of religion”

I’d say it shows two things: first, the destructiveness of religion itself; and second, and more particularly in this case, how ruthlessly and devastatingly religion can be co-opted to further narrow interests, in this case by Empire, by the British.

Both of which nuances I suppose summarize into, and as you say, the destructiveness of religion.

No doubt there’d have been grief aplenty in any case at that geography and around that time, with the British holding on for dear life to their golden goose, that had fed them and clothed them so well for so very long, and the Indians doing their desperate utmost to rid themselves of these bloodsucking parasites. But without doubt there’d have been less of the outright carnage, far far less of it, than if religion had not been a factor.

-----

“What I find difficult to understand, from my perspective here in the United States, is how it can be that India is still convulsed by Hindu-Muslim violence, with Prime Minister Modi's political party being devoted to Hindu nationalism.”

Two factors, is what I’d suggest.

The first is the venality of politicians and other sundry charlatans, cynically making use of religion to try to further their own private personal ends. And as it happens doing that, achieving those ends, spectacularly successfully. No different, in that respect, than Trump, except maybe in degree, as far as religion specifically.

And the second is a whole mass of folks who, under a thin veneer of education and rationality, in reality harbor a whole mess of all manner of fantastic and unevidenced superstitions and magical thinking; a whole mass of folks who readily fall prey to the machinations of said cynical political and religious charlatans. Again no different really than their equivalent in the US.

Which is why I say (and I’ve said this here more than once): The US has survived one term of Trump, damaged in some degree but not irrevocably so; but if Trump, or someone like him, manages to win through two or three or four terms, and particularly two or three or four terms at a stretch, then the US will no longer be recognizable as the sane and largely rational and largely civilized place that it is today. In essence it will regress back to the dark ages, to Talibanesque conditions, with abortions completely and irrevocably outlawed, and women reduced to second class citizens, and cross-eyed Bible-thumping religious bigots holding sway, and all of the rest of it. The precipice is far closer, and the fall far deeper, than many recognize; and there is no place for complacency. Witness the astonishingly precipitious fall of India, after decades of hard-won progress that had rightly earned it the respect of all of the world despite its many material disadvantages; and witness also how just a single term of Trump has already fractured the polity beyond what one might have imagined possible, opening up fissures and weaknesses that most did not imagine existed, or at any rate ran so very deep: What has happened to India can in a short enough time frame end up happening to the US as well.

[um]

@ AR

As long as people are mesmerize by what is there to see on the screen of life, they are only able and willing, if at all, to discuss the content of what they see in terms of like and dislikes ..the consumers of facts.

Once awaken in the cinema one can focus on other things than the content of the movie.

Those lost in books, and other means of data presentation, do not like to be disturbed.
Probably for a good reason. ... hahaha

[Appreciative Reader]

How true, um. Inevitably one gets carried away in the heat of the moment, especially when one finds oneself particularly incensed. Which, to fall back to your metaphor, opens the door to the cinema all over again.

Hm, but then the Daoic ideal, and even more the Confucian --- as opposed to the Zenic, and more generally the Buddhistic --- would find fulfillment specifically within the cinema and nowhere else.

Brrrrrrrr! More coffee called for! Not so much to unravel that knot --- I'm not sure that knot can be unraveled, that conflict effectively resolved, not even with Java-fueled lucidity --- but simply for the pleasure of it.

[Appreciative Reader]

Although, thinking about it some more, perhaps the resolution might lie in uncovering, and then pursuing, one's own inner proclivity? In ascertaining if one is fundamentally intraverted (in the philsophical/spiritual sense, as opposed to the Myers-Briggs pop-psychological), in which case going the Zen-ic way, the Buddhistic way; and if the opposite, if fundamentally extraverted, then favoring the Daoic and Confucian ideal.

Me, I'm with you (speaking for myself, and, basis the preceding paragraph, not generalizing this beyond myself). I'm happiest when absorbed within, whether in books, or in meditaiton, or zoned in while engaged in some activity, be it work, or working out, or sex even, heh. In other words, when outside of the hurly burly of the cinema. Much like you, from what I've understood of you.

So yeah, your point taken, um. And your reminder appreciated.

[um]

@ AR

Hmmm ....I would think Lao Zi not to be a man that wanted to change or add to what was natural there given the stress he laid on trees that were good for nothing and in not serving any good could survive and give shadow during the heat of the day for idealist to have some rest drinking their tea and forget about their ideals.

The others, all of them are idealists ... having a goal in mind.... not able to accept what was given to them for free.

[KS]

The Punjab partition: when protectors become perpetrators
The 1947 partition of the Subcontinent divided Punjab into two parts – the West Punjab, belonging to Pakistan and the East Punjab, which became part of India. It was associated with massive violence within the six month time frame, large exchanges of population (approximately ten million), and significant involvement of the government in evacuating and protecting the refugees.
The enforced movement of the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim populations of Punjab has been described as ‘on a scale absolutely unparalleled in the history of the world’. (Singh and Sharma, p.114). Around five-and-a-half million Muslims migrated to West Punjab, and around four-and-a-half million Hindus and Sikhs moved to east Punjab. (Ilyas Chatta, p.80) Violence is regarded as the main cause of the mass migrations that occurred in Punjab (see Talbot and Singh, p.66-67) and it became notorious in history as the ‘bloody battlefield of the Partition whereby far the greatest number of massacres of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims occurred’ (Yasmin, p.07).

Moreover, Chattha argued that there was an organised violence in Punjab, and ‘its aim was what would be now be termed the ethnic cleansing of the unwanted population’. (Ilyas Chattha, p.155). For example, during a single week in March 1947, four thousand Muslim homes and shops were destroyed in Amritsar. Violence was such that:

“On both sides of the 35-mile-long road between Amritsar and Lahore, there were heaps of corpses. It appeared as if the entire territory had been converted into an extensive graveyard.” (Ian talbot, p.161).

The role of servicemen

One of the main reasons for the violence was the communal tension in Punjab, especially due to the Sikhistan issue as Sikhs demanded an independent Sikh state. The Sikhistan issue is well known and adequately covered by academic literature (See Talbot and Singh, p.206 and  Amrik Singh, pp.159-177) However, it is rarely discussed that what role did the servicemen, such as policemen, army and civil service officers, played in causing the violence in Punjab at partition. The servicemen are considered the protectors of a country as it is their duty to maintain law and order, and protect the country and its people from attacks. However, servicemen in Punjab perpetuated violence, instead of controlling it. This article will look at how and why they instigated the violence in Punjab.

The sheer scale of violence in Punjab caused India and Pakistan to agree on an exchange of population in the Punjab under the control of Military Evacuation Organisations (MEOs). Headquarters of MEOs were set up on both sides of the new international boundary. To facilitate the evacuation of refugees, the West Punjab Government and the East Punjab Government reached an agreement according to which no train or motor vehicle was to cross the border without refugees from the other side. Additionally, foot convoys of refugees, especially the peasants of the Punjab, was another method of evacuation. These evacuations meant that minorities had no choice but to leave their ancestral homes. While this was helpful for refugees who were under the severe threat of being attacked, it also meant the migration of minorities who did not face any such serious threats. (Talbot and Singh, p.102)

Punjab had been a major military recruitment area of British India. At the start of the Second World War, 48 percent of the Indian army consisted of men from Punjab. After the end of the Second World War, the large number of demobilized soldiers of Punjab, who primarily belonged to the Muslim and Sikh communities, perpetrated violence on each other. These ex-servicemen did not only possess weapons, but they were professionally trained in the use of arms and their recent experience in the war meant that the brutalities carried out by them were lethal. For instance, the attacks on refugee trains were ‘characterized by the use of military tactics, the methodical and systematic manner, a high degree of planning and organisation, and military precision.’ (Talbot and Singh, p.208)

The government officials were given the right to choose which dominion they wanted to join. The transferring of civil and public officers, such as Deputy Commissioners and other high officials who belonged to the respective minority community had an adverse effect on that community as they provided a sense of security in an atmosphere of communal tensions. With their departure, the officers of the majority community became hostile to the minority communities in some areas.

Singh argues that law and order was difficult to maintain on both sides of the Punjab because of the ‘infected’ police. For instance, in East Punjab new policemen had to be recruited as out of around 20,000 policemen of the United Punjab, only 7000 policemen were left with East Punjab. (Singh and Sharma, p.123) Most of the new recruiters in the East Punjab Police were refugees from West Punjab, who had seen communal rioting and were affected themselves by it. They were infected with communal virus and therefore when problems began in East Punjab, instead of trying to control the situation, these policemen supported the wrong doers. For example, a number of men in railway police Ambala were arrested on the charges of looting and murder. (reference from kirpal) Similarly, according to Talbot , the police of both East Punjab and the West Punjab raped, killed and looted on various occasions. (Ian Talbot, p.158)

Conclusion

The partition of Punjab was a tragedy that is remembered to date as it affected the lives of millions of people. The partition showed that when a country faces a major catastrophe, servicemen like police, army and civil service officers play a crucial role in maintaining law and order and protecting people in a country. However, if these servicemen themselves perpetuate violence then the consequences can be dire. As we witness a significant rise in hate crimes across India, it is imperative that the policemen and army in the country are not adversely affected by any forms of communalism, and carry out their role aptly and effectively.

[Jim Sutherland]

And the hostilities still go on , daily, at the Pakistan border, as when I sat in the bleachers on 2017.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02bc9vNvXDpaENHS3bDsXvwy8G7xh18EPg3CVdS5yPvX13kvocJZ4fVuFE1hkqFTTal&id=1480455885

Jim Sutherland

[KS]

Plight of minorities in Pakistan

INSIGHT UK is raising awareness of the denial of human rights and religious freedoms of the minorities in Pakistan. The country which is not only breeding terrorists, but is also abusing its minorities and brutalising them in myriad ways. Forcible conversion of minorities or driving them out of their ancestral homes, can be gauged from the fact that the non-Muslim minorities have declined from 23% at the time of partition in 1947 to barely 4% now.

Plight of Hindu in Pakistan

In the last 2 years alone there have been 7 attacks against Hindu places of worship. The latest one happened on August 4, 2021 and we wish to bring this to your attention and request you to raise your voice against the brutal and inhuman Pakistan government. The Hindu temple in Bhong City in Rahim Yar Khan district of Punjab province was destroyed by a mob.

Here is a list of desecrations and destruction of Hindu temples from the recent past.

• A 100 year old Hindu temple in Rawalpindi, the capital of Pakistan was attacked and property destroyed.

• In June 2020, the construction of a Hindu temple in Islamabad was stopped. Though the permission had been granted by the Islamabad Capital Development Authority, there were objections and lawsuits to stop the construction.

• A pre-partition Hindu temple in Karachi was demolished in August 2020 by a builder and the police sealed off the site, preventing access.

• The Hindu temple in Nagarparkar in Sindh province was vandalized and idols damaged in October 2020.

• The Hindu temple in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was set on fire and destroyed by a mob following hate speech in December 2020. This temple which was built in 1919, was the target of an attack in 1997 as well.

• In January 2020, the Hindu temple in Chhachro City of Sindh province was attacked and idols were broken.

• In the same month, the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara, the place of worship of Sikhs, was pelted with stones.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke. That’s why it is absolutely imperative, both as a great human being and as a politician, raising your voice is essential to protect the voiceless in a land of barbarity. The laundry list of brutal, inhuman, often criminal behaviour of the people, the police, and the politicians of Pakistan is long and heart breaking. We present to you a tiny bit of this sordid list.

The Pakistan government is guilty of violating international covenants that it has voluntarily signed. Pakistan has signed the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Pakistan has also signed other covenants of the UN including respecting women’s rights and children’s rights. These are very important covenants as Pakistan has violated the rights of women and female children particularly.

In essence, we want to stress the following for your immediate action and support.

1. Minorities are in constant danger: Rape, abduction, forced conversion and even murder are frequent occurrences. Policemen refuse to take action against perpetrators of atrocities or worse still, become participants in the crime.

2. Non-Muslim minorities – Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians face denial of equal rights. Hindus being the largest minority group, face most of the attacks.
Muslim minorities include Shia, Hazara, Ahmadis, Ismaili, and Bohra (a branch of Ismaili) account for 15-20% of the population but the numbers are not very clear. The Pakistan constitution does not recognize Ahmadis as Muslims and the Ahmadis face as much danger as non-Muslim minorities.

3. The Pakistan government is in denial most of the time, and at times due to international pressure, launches an investigation that eventually blames the victims. With a small population often facing violent mobs, the minorities do not have any choice but to submit to the brutality of the marauding mobs. The feeble and often untruthful ‘investigations’ do not produce any tangible results. So, asking the Pakistan government to take action and depending on them to protect the minorities is never going to work, unless there is international pressure and human rights watch is monitoring the situation and promised actions.

4. Judiciary in Pakistan is in collusion with the perpetrators of crimes as most often the accused have been released for ‘lack of evidence’ or by quoting Islamic Law or because the minorities ‘agreed to pardon the perpetrators’. The country’s draconian blasphemy laws are being foisted on innocent people, for imaginary offences. Even the judiciary is complicit in this crime by accepting that the minorities have ‘pardoned the perpetrators’, refusing to recognize the fact that the ‘pardon’ is also obtained by coercion.

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5. There were 400+ Hindu temples in the Sindh region of Pakistan at the time of partition in 1947. Now, there are barely 20, with the rest of the temples either having been demolished and desecrated or converted into mosques. The Evacuee Trust Property Board of Pakistan should have a Hindu or Sikh as its head as per the Liaqat Ali – Nehru Pact. But today, all 6 official members of the Board are Muslims and of the 18 non-official members only 8 are Hindus and Sikhs.

The Evacuee Trust Property Board has been criticised for leasing sacred Hindu temples. The board rented out the historic Kali Bari Hindu Temple to a Muslim in Dera Ismail Khan in 2014 and the temple is being converted and used as the Taj Mahal Hotel. Frontier Constabulary officials, with the help of the board, have occupied the Shamshan Ghaat in Dera Ismail Khan and the Hindu community is unable to cremate their dead because of the unavailability of Shamshan Ghaat and is forced to bury them in a graveyard shared by members of other faiths. As per Hindu custom, the body should be cremated and not buried. Hindus are being denied their due even after their death.

6. Menial jobs are reserved for minorities, while claiming that Islam treats everyone equally. In most of Pakistan the menial jobs are primarily reserved for Christians. The menial jobs are mostly removing solid waste and sweeping the roads and public places, often at below minimum wages.

7. Even well-known people are no exception to these attacks. The only Hindu ever to play cricket for Pakistan has spoken out about the degrading treatment he received from his team mates. This has also been confirmed by one of his Muslim team mates. The Muslim player has come under attack for supporting the Hindu player’s allegations.

8. Activists of all kinds – Hindus, Christians, Baloch activists are in constant fear of murder, even if they leave Pakistan. Two Baloch activists have been found dead in a river and lake following several death threats – one in Sweden and another in Canada. A third activist, who was calling attention to the plight of Christians in Pakistan was attacked with a knife and suffered serious injuries in South Korea. The ISI has been the suspect in all these cases.

9. In 2010, after a delay of 44 and 24 years respectively, Pakistan signed and ratified two key international treaties of United Nations – namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CAT). However, the people of the country do not have recourse to any law. The UN is a spectator to the ugly spectacle of spiralling religious intolerance, government inaction, and judicial collusion in Pakistan.

It is with deep trepidation at what is in store for the remaining minorities in Pakistan.

[Jim Sutherland]

The Brits had a huge demonstration against BBC’s propaganda on India.

https://twitter.com/staunch_namo/status/1619273683822075905?s=61&t=r27lNxFULXBtNTwnSqipMw

[Ron E.]

Very informative comments. On the face of it, religion does play a huge part in many world conflicts, yet religion is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. The real problem here and the origins of our on-going sufferings must rest with the complex intricacies of human nature.

Similar conflicts arise through, national, religious and economic situations but underlying it all are the elements of fear and insecurity, driven on by the desperate need to be psychologically safe – not just physically secure but mentally. There is nothing better to make one feel okay and inwardly secure, than the feeling of being right – which needles to say is very subjective.

It all comes back to belief and it takes many forms, but basically there is always this big search for some sort of continuity. Belief in ones’ chosen politicians, religion or some sort of spiritual belief, creates the sense of being protected – either protected from the ‘nasty’ country next door, the other religious believers who tells us we are wrong or perhaps the disbeliever whose theories threaten our mental security.

I honestly don’t think there is an answer – short of a complete change of conscious content –where the aggressive needs of the ego/self is seen and understood as the fear-laden, insecure and divisive construct that it is. For thousands of years, we have been at war with one another, with others’ thinking and beliefs that threaten ours. All we can do, and all we ever do, is stick a band aid over the problem and hope none of the world’s nastiness arrives on our door-step!

[um]

>> I honestly don’t think there is an answer – short of a complete change of conscious content –where the aggressive needs of the ego/self is seen and understood as the fear-laden, insecure and divisive construct that it is.<<

There is nothing wrong with the ego!
It is neither YOUR or MINE , invention.
Nor is it aggressive by nature.

Have some coffee, sit down and imagine yourself, striped of any cultural baggage, somewhere on your own. What then, would be your daily concerns?!

From that understandinf, transport yourself to cultural situations with NO neighbors that have different needs, understanding etc etc etc.

Next step add to it neighbors that are there with different cultural interest, meanings and values, but at a distance. You know them to be there but you hardly contact one another besides some trade.

Slowly, add up the closeness, the amount of neighbors and the cultural differences

Remember that you are still that same natural biological human being, that has the slightest clue about the origin and the purpose of its existence. Just being alive and with that strong inner drive to survive, living in environment that is other than he is, that he doesn't understand, having the mechanism to fight and to run.

There it all starts ... culture is an fake "natural" environment .. it has its desserts, artics, rain forests, savanas etc populate with all sorts of animals, some of which are very dangerous for your own survival

MY point .. we are made, like all creatures, to live and survive within the confines of an territory ...any form of change relate to the territory borders, the content of the territory, can provoke stress .... we cannot live in an expanded territory called globalization.

Again try to bypass my miserable command of your language and find the gist of the idea.

[um]

And ... humans that think that they can and should manage nature included things like climate, nature reserves etc etc etc. will sooner or later discover that they are provoking one disaster after the other, and inflict the wrath of mother nature upon themselves ...
men is made to live in nature as a part of nature. For that latter it is equipped by nature to live a long life. It is not equipped by any means or standard to direct, change or whatever in nature.

Humans have separated themselves mentally, emotional and intellectual, from nature.

Remember the diction:
Live a natural live in a natural way
and
A simple live in a simple way

No creature assembles more than he needs for the survival.

There is no solution to be expected from any ideological activist group ... and ... those who do come up with a solution, can only have it worked out by others by Suppressive action.... controll ... taking away the natural freedom of humans, turning them in some kind of robots or slaves.

If you think that those that present themselves with their ideology more "saloon suitable" than those whose behavior make you throw up, you are wrong

[Jim Sutherland]

@um,…..it appears your favorite passion is Coffee? I also am a Coffer lover. If you could only buy one lb. a week, to serve your best friends, if they visit, what would you serve? I rewarded my self last May after successfully surviving prostrate surgery, by ordering 7 lbs. of my favorite Coffee which is 100% Kona Medium roasted beans, that I grind 1/4 lb. at a time. I liked it well enough to buy another 12 lbs, which I only have 1 lb. Left. I won’t order from that Vender again, because not only did 5 of the 12 one lb. Bags arrive unsealed at the top of the bags, but they increased the price another several dollars a lb. So, what is YOUR favorite?
I think “living while allowing all others to live, “ with out encroaching up on them , would be the only way to living in a peaceful world. But where does that ever happen? Our Planet Earth, Gaia, struggles to survive the damage Preditors do to it, and respond when its attacked. I view human predators like fruit flies that constantly invade my private space. They arrive uninvited, breed, multiply, and become pests. So I am forced to respond by setting fly traps which kill them, and even then, I can’t kill enough of them fast enough to prevent infestation. That’s most likely what’s happening on earth, as we human preditors kill each other, ( as the Suicide bomber did in the Mosque in Pakistan this morning), and by natural disasters and the Covid Bio Weapon.

[um]

@ Jim

I just satisfy myself with "trade Mark" coffee beans from the supermarket next door.

Although life has presented me now and then, with here choices gifts, in many a field, I myself, was never on the search for any of these tasty titbits. Jokingly I present myself now and then to others as an cultural barbarian making fun about their blinded focus on what they call .. the best of the best.

And what the rest is concerned ... I am just an bypassing visitor in life, concerned only with what is near and dear. Now and then, I have to see what is going on around me and try to understand it. .. just curiosity. .. gazing at what is around the things I see tell me their own story, That is all.

If I happen to be in a place where somebody tels me he is doing "X" and it appears that the end effect will be "Y"... I might make a remark. NOT that I personally am interested in EITHER "x" or "y"

And doing so you get things like:

Authorities in whatever form, during the whole of history, have used human beings as their slaves, made them build cathedrals and castles ... even to day ... all building where officials spend their days are modern cathedrals and castles, filled with any imaginable luxury ... all worked for and payed by the people they should serve.

Yes, ...SERVE

Those that have the talents given to them by nature for free, should use these to create better living circumstances for the others instead of misusing these talents for their own welfare and have other toil for it

Have a look in your own world ... next time you bypass a human being lying in the street, begging for mercy ...remember my words ...what you see there should simple said NOT OUGHT TO BE THERE

And as long as it is there all talk about democrats, republicans, capitalism, communism or whatever as just distraction.

Do not ask me for solutions ... I have none and I do not care ... these are just things to be seen. I am just telling those thinking to produce "X" for the world do cause "Y" to occur. It is up to THEM that accept thrones to sit on to act.

[Trez]

At this time n era of Indias 1947 partition alot of Baba like Radha Soami thought of taking advantage of the vulnerable people's minds by selling a new idea a concept, a religious pile of garbage

Slowly this cult radha soami started to flourish on lies and went through many questionable ethics from the times of Sawan Singh to now the questionable Gurinder Singh Dhilion they were copying word to word from the Sikh religion also from every other religion they could find just so they could get they're rotten feet in the door. And get the dollor rolling in for them

Radha Soami was based on different concepts of greed and power and slowly it started to show and now the front door has swung open for all to see its rotten vile foundations and what it was built on.

Gurinder Singh Dhilion is still abusing mankind's kind nature today and using them as fools to get his Radha Soami cult to expand internationally to a very profitable business of riches and power for him only to enjoy. Which he does so saintly lol

If he is and portrays himself as a god which he does cleverly then what has HE done for this world and its people in need.

Its the people who have done everything for him.

See how the Sevadars give it they're all for Nothing in return.

How sickening but saintly is he and how blind are we all?

Question it all when you have the chance of a Questions and Answers session in front of Gurinder Singh Dhilion and see how he weaves out of it everytime.

Watch him hide which is all he has ever known

The real disaster is Gurinder Singh Dhilion not Indias 1947 partition

Seeing is believing and hearing it sets you Free from him forever

[um]

@ Trez

For my own reasons I came interested in Sant Mat
For my own reasons I asked for Initiation.
For my own reasons was involved in quite a lot of different services.
For my own reason I left it all behind.

With great pleasure, II member those days,
the good company of many people I would otherwise never have met
the many things I learned from them and doing free service

Every minute I spend there was worth my time.

With gratitude I left it behind and have no regret and if the occasion would arise I would do it all over.

I do read your words as if written by a person brainwashed in this or that cult afraid of mental freedom, clinging to this or that doctrine imposed on him.

Those who NEED to criticize others as you do and your friends are afraid to stand on their own legs.