Dear Kids,
India’s struggle for freedom taught us something which no manual on ‘Waging War on Your Enemy’ has ever enumerated. This lesson, a very difficult one, but a very important one is ‘You can despise someone’s policies and yet be at peace with that someone.’
At the time of Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India in 1915, the British were still a blood-sucking, land occupying, foreign invaders, but the British people, and the Indian people working for the British, were just doing their jobs, following orders, and trying to keep their heads up just as the savagery of the First World War entered its second year.
The entire world at that time seemed to be very comfortable with the idea of War and would remain so till 1945 (and later).
At such time of blood letting (between WW1 and WW2, an estimated 100 million people lost their lives), the moral compass of peaceful struggle for independence through dialogue, discussion, disobedience towards the unjust, and dharma was established.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. It tells us what all someone did wrong. It also tells us what all they did right!
This ability to identify with both right and wrong, to embrace the right and to forgive the wrong is what this date is all about.
Dharma. At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Not the petty understanding of the word in the language of the bigot, but the powerful cosmic energy that it emits when the meaning is established by true saints, the likes of whom this world has not seen for a while.
Keep that smile on.
Happy Children’s Day.