Images: detail from painting by Gottfried Helnwein.
Daily Fix
The War on the Innocents
T. SHER SINGH
We stagger once again from the killing of innocents.
On Monday, April 15, 2013, we saw the murder and maiming of participants and bystanders in the Boston Marathon.
The sheer senselessness of it has turned our lives upside down. The brutality. The meaninglessness. The callousness. The horror.
The how and the why, the where and the when, the how many … nothing makes it less painful. Or more.
It simply pierces the heart.
The fact that we have suffered other massacres of innocents in recent months and years, over and over again, makes it no less difficult to accept this one. It feels as raw and cruel as the first one, or the next … or the next.
It makes no sense. Men, women, children … young and old … get mowed down while going about their daily lives, doing ordinary things. At random.
The sanctity of what they are doing at the moment seems to offer them no protection.
A school.
A place of worship.
A university.
A theatre.
A sports meet.
A college.
A shopping mall.
And now, the finish line of an athletic event.
I don’t understand the pathology that gives birth to the madness that authors such tragedies.
Wars, I can understand.
I can also understand that it is right to defend oneself and protect others.
I understand that opposite sides in the same war can truly believe that good and even God is on their side … both of them.
I don’t condone them. But I can understand them.
But this raising of hands against innocents? I don’t understand it.
What good could possibly come from it, no matter how righteous the cause? How can the oppressed resort to the same methods as the oppressor? Because then, where is the line that divides the two.
Isn’t this what they mean when they say that the end can never justify the means? No matter how great or pure or urgent the cause, the murder of innocents simply cannot be the path to justice.
No matter how hungry, how can we snatch a morsel from a starving child? And then, expect to feel satiated. Or healthy.
No matter how justifiable our claim, how can we throw a family out on the street and occupy their home? Having made the other homeless, you can’t ever enjoy the shade of a shelter.
No matter how committed we are to our faiths, to kill another to proclaim the supremacy of our beliefs reveals nothing but paucity of substance.
These adages have been coined to rein in the high and the mighty, the rich and the powerful, the tyrant and the oppressor.
But they apply no less to those who have been wronged.
There are no ifs and buts about it: the outrage in Boston this week is a crime against humanity.
You can also read this article on The Huffington Post.
April 17, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), April 17, 2013, 7:12 AM.
Killing for 'supremacy of belief' or taking out anger on innocent people is what happens when the ego is not restrained and wants the satisfaction of revenge and the gratification which goes with it! In Sikhism the Guru teaches us to serve the community and control our passions,
2: Dr Birinder Singh Ahluwalia (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 17, 2013, 10:49 AM.
Such acts of wanton and senseless violence have no place in the collective humanity we cherish and live in. Let us all join hands and speak in one chorus as one people to claim pride in the dignity and beauty of the humanity we have created and strive as one people to make it better for all. My sincerest condolences for the victims and their families in the Boston Marathon tragedy.
3: K P Singh (Indianapolis, Indiana, USA), April 18, 2013, 8:34 AM.
When "sacred spaces" where people gather to learn, worship, enjoy and participate in life's myriad blessings, responsibilities, and opportunities become no longer safe, then it is time to take another look at what is leading to the acts of daily carnage of innocents, continues to embolden the ones who want to cause hurt and anguish to others, to an entire society, and to human civilization itself. We need to explore what steps parents, teachers, civic and faith and leaders must take, what values they must inspire and we must personally demonstrate to set a new course to heal a very troubled and violent world. Dispassionately examine what entrenched laws and guarantees, what ideas and attitudes are causing more harm than good, generating more heat and hatred than peace and goodwill, taking cherished dreams and aspirations farther, so much so that we must update our environment to reflect the changed circumstances. The answers are not easy, never simple, but we should look into the faces of the families of the children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the families of the Marathon runners in Boston, the loved ones of the victims at the Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Then expand that picture of human cruelty and calculated terror: the Jewish Holocaust with the deaths of six million Jews; deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sikhs in horrific pogroms of 1984 and the decade that followed; a million lives lost in Tibetan and Rwandan genocides; daily carnage in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places and remind ourselves that the dead are not just a number. They represent dreams with unimagined potential, but now lost; these were lives with promise and hopes. As we ask God's help to end this nightmare, we challenge our own communities, nations, and humanity everywhere to seek peace, to enter into faith where possible, and to end this spiraling madness as an act of moral responsibility, human decency and survival, and find other ways to redress wrongs. "Sacred places" and "human intersections" where people gather for fun, study, work, or to experience the joys and splendor of life, should be free of fear, violence, and uncertainty. Human progress depends on our going forward, and no longer addressing our problems as we did in the dark ages.