Bridging The Divide

After browsing through the recent issue of a national magazine I switched to reading an academic competition magazine as a preparation dose for the National Law School of India University Entrance Exams (Popularly known as Big Daddy in law aspirants) that I have been dreaming of cracking. Both the issues had one thing in common; they were about bridging the divide. While the formers’ arguments scattered all over from bridging the divide between haves and have-nots of various kinds ranging from poor and rich to Information technology savvy and unsavvy the academic competition magazine boasted about bridging the gap between rural and the urban India.

But are these the only gaps that need to be bridged? Is there nothing more to a human than material wants of money, technology, of being able to reserve railway tickets at home through the Internet or withdrawing cash from an ATM?

As far as my belief goes, there certainly is. The gap that needs to be bridged in the true sense isn’t and never was of having or not having or of possessing or not possessing materials or resources until recently. It is and has always been of thinking like and thinking unlike. Poverty always there until richness arrived, so was hunger until food. Before poverty or hunger came however, there always lived Humans.

We all agree to the fact that one thing that separates humans from all others is his ability to think, to think independently and act accordingly. And these thoughts come labeled in various forms. Some call it “philosophy” some “religion” and some have their own way to live without labeling it. Conflict occurs when the two thoughts contradict or one is threatened of being wiped out due to the other. Islamic terrorism, Naxalite Terrorism or violence in any other form as of today is the result of this very conflict. The bloodshed, the violence, the loss of life and humanity is its price. It is the price of not being able to coexist along with each other, respecting each other without being a threat to each other.

This inability of not being able to digest foreign thoughts is the result of judging others on our own experiences. It is about looking at life through our self-designed design of pigeonholes denying to believe that some other design may also exist. Unbelieving in some other or every other design than our own makes us want to destroy it or if we can’t, we prefer being away from it. Until and unless a position of respect is achieved by every human mind for itself and every other, the true gap shall never be bridged. Because true gap isn’t about someone having more than me, someone will always have more but the true gap is about someone not thinking like me. One doesn’t require food, money more than necessary to live peacefully but one does require respect to his thoughts to rest in peace.