Contributor: Basil Fernando
AHRC, July 19, 2011
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A summary of a presentation made to the Vigil India Movement, Bangalore by the Asian Human Rights Commission
Each generation has its own challenges. Not long ago the great challenge was to dispel the foreign invader and to claim our land as our own. Today we face a far different challenge, which is, to become our own. Today’s challenge is a societal one. We are call upon to develop our own collective will for development of societal arrangements within which each individual can claim that his or her society as in reality their own, that in a basic sense we belong to each other. That in some basic sense we care for each other.This sense of belonging cannot just be sentimental or merely be ideological. It has to be practical in some basic sense real. This call is for among other things making arrangements for our security. Which is effective and at the same time normal. Abnormal pre-occupation for security is a disease. Such abnormal arrangements divide more than unite create distrust, create fear instead of love. To live in fear of each other is as worst as it can get.
Each generation has its own challenges. Not long ago the great challenge was to dispel the foreign invader and to claim our land as our own. Today we face a far different challenge, which is, to become our own. Today’s challenge is a societal one. We are call upon to develop our own collective will for development of societal arrangements within which each individual can claim that his or her society as in reality their own, that in a basic sense we belong to each other. That in some basic sense we care for each other.This sense of belonging cannot just be sentimental or merely be ideological. It has to be practical in some basic sense real. This call is for among other things making arrangements for our security. Which is effective and at the same time normal. Abnormal pre-occupation for security is a disease. Such abnormal arrangements divide more than unite create distrust, create fear instead of love. To live in fear of each other is as worst as it can get.
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