Since its formation Pakistan has been working hard to
separate itself from its Indic roots. Some recent events augur a small
beginning towards a new trend, Pakistan returning to the idea of
Vasudaiva Kutumbhakam and finding peace with its past. While it is too
early to draw a conclusion, it is the only real way forward.
March 2016 will be remembered for a long time. First, there were the horrific
bomb attacks in Brussels, carried out by ISIS, and then there was the
Easter Sunday slaughter in the Pakistani city of Lahore, where the intended target was the Christian community, as
CNN reports.
This attack was carried out by the Pakistani Taliban outfit,
Jamat-ul-Ahrar. These two incidents once again demonstrated to a shocked
world the
nature and the goals of Islamic fundamentalism.
For
lovers of peace, culture, and civilized living on the other hand, the
month of March 2016 will also go down in history for two other very
special reasons. First, the mammoth World Culture Festival held in New
Delhi proved to the world that there is a large chunk of the world’s
population today that buys into the idea that the entire planet Earth
and its teeming humanity – comprising people of different nationalities,
races, languages, ethnicities, religions, languages, and cultures – is
one human family.
The second reason why March 2016 will go down in history is because
of a small but significant development that took place in Pakistan
where, in a historic move, the province of Sindh declared Holi, the
ancient pre-Islamic spring festival of colors, a public holiday for all.
All of these four events may be an augury of what lies in the future as
world changes accelerate in this century.
The
World Culture Festival that
took place 11-13 March 2016 was of tremendous global significance. It
brought together 3.75 million people of all races, religions,
nationalities, languages, and cultures from
155 countries to New Delhi who
assembled in one place to meditate together and celebrate diversity,
peace, music, dance, human values, and the unity and brotherhood of all
religions and races.
The theme of the festival was
Vasudha iva kutumbakam or
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, an ancient Sanskrit phrase from the Upanishads which literally means
the entire world is truly just one family.
(“The world is a family/One is a relative, the other a stranger/Say the
small minded/The entire world is a family/Live the magnanimous,” goes
the original
verse.)
Showcasing the planet’s rich cultural and human diversity, WCF 2016
emphasized the unity of all of humanity as one human family.
The main venue on the banks of the Yamuna had a 7 acre stage on which
over 37,000 artists from all over the world gave live
performances. Besides the over 3.75 million people representing 155
countries who attended the event, groups and individuals at 767,436
locations in 188 countries viewed the webcast according to the report of
the webcast partner, Livestream.
Social media partners reported 1.4 billion impressions on Twitter and
30 million engagements on Facebook during the event. Just one of the
many TV channels televising the proceedings reported a viewership of 16
million for itself.
The initiative was a spiritual and cultural extravaganza unlike any
other witnessed before in history. The three day festival was marked by
the convergence of artistes and performers, spiritual leaders,
politicians, business leaders, and peacemakers from across the world who
joined each other on a common platform to celebrate the uniqueness as
well as the unity and commonality of all the cultures of the world and
foster a deeper understanding between people of different faiths, races,
nationalities, and backgrounds.
It is a testament to the great work of the Art of Living in Pakistan,
carried out mostly by Pakistani volunteers, that Pakistan was
represented by some notable delegates like Senator
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s youngest Member of Parliament
Uzair Khan, and
Shahnaz Minallah, a teacher of
Sudarshan Kriya yoga and meditation.
On the final day of the global cultural extravaganza, the Pakistani
dance contingent performed a high octane routine which they named Punk
Sufi. The dance was set to the tunes of Arif Lohar’s “Jugni ji,” touted
as the most viewed Pakistani song on YouTube. The routine comprised
performers dressed in white and green waving the Pakistani flag on
stage, while others moved to the tunes of “Sufi trance” which was
interspersed with poetry that talked about “harmony and oneness, love
and peace,” as the Indian Express
reports.
While the tune and the song were catchy, the Punk Sufi dance itself
basically consisted of seven dancers in colored robes who furiously
jiggled and twirled, with the rest of the dancers either standing still,
wildly flailing Pakistani flags, or running helter-skelter with the
flags in their hands. The front rows at the WCF in particular seem to
have loved it.
The segment can be viewed on YouTube
here
(5:03:05 in the recording). Sri Sri Ravi Shankar took the microphone as
soon as the Pakistani performance ended. Speaking in Hindi, he first
congratulated the performers and then exhorted them to take this very
message of peace back to Pakistan: “
Yahi sandesh le ke jaeeye ap vahan par, aur shanti-aman ka sandesh le ke jaeeye yahan se.”
The second irony, equally obvious to the keen observer, was that the
Pakistani dance delegation was perhaps the only one, out of all the
countries, that felt compelled to integrate the act of brandishing
Pakistani flags into its dance routine.
One wonders if this was done because they cannot be seen abandoning
the core ideology of Pakistan back home. At any rate, the Pakistani
contingent was showered with tremendous love and appreciation. According
to
Shahnaz Minallah,
“We were greeted with a standing ovation and many of us had tears in our eyes. It was surreal.”
Pakistan’s participation in the World Culture Festival is heartening
in and of itself because it shows that there is a constituency within
Pakistan, however small and voiceless it may seem right now, that
responds to the call of
vasudhaiva kutumbakam. It is also
reasonable to suppose that at least some of the Pakistani youth,
artists, and leaders who came to celebrate universal brotherhood on a
global stage and discovered an international audience that openly
acknowledges the concept that all of humanity is one family will likely
take the idea back to their circles of influence with renewed vigor.
The second significant reason why March 2016 will go down as a
special month for lovers of cultural fiestas is because of a new
development that took place in Pakistan, where the province of Sindh, in
a historic and contextually brave and progressive move declared the
ancient spring festival of colors – the festival of Holi –
a public holiday for all the people in the province, in spite of the demand from some quarters that the
holiday be limited to the Hindu community only.
A fresh provincial government notification was reissued and confirmed
that the declaration of a public holiday for the whole of Sindh
stood valid despite the opposition from various Islamist quarters and the earlier confusion.
It is interesting that while Pakistani Punjab has banned Basant,
another Hindu/native pre-Islamic festival that till a few years ago used
to be observed with great gusto in Lahore, Sindh has actually
reinstated Holi on its ancient soil by instituting it as an official
state holiday. This is a miracle in itself and it confirms once again
that there is a constituency within Pakistan that is beginning to open
up to its own pre-Islamic roots.
Out of all festivals, Holi is the expression of
vasudhaiva kutumbakam
par excellence. Though associated with Hinduism and endowed with
various symbolic meanings and levels of interpretations, Holi is
basically an expression of
“the spirit of universal brotherhood that transcends color, creed, caste or social status,” as Dr. Ilmana Fasih, an Indian Muslim married to a Pakistani, states in her brilliant article titled
“You can play Holi too, even if you are Muslim.”
In it she explores the importance that Holi and its deeper symbolisms
were accorded by Muslim Sufi masters and poets like Amir Khusrow, Bulle
Shah, and Shah Niyaz, as well as Mughals like Akbar, Jahangir, and
Bahadur Shah Zafar, who appreciated and incorporated the festival and
idiom of Holi in art, poetry, music, governance, and even spiritual
quest.
“Jahangir, the romantic art connoisseur is documented to have played Holi with his queen, Nur Jahan, in his palace and called it Eid-e-Gulabi,” as Dr. Fasih explains. Emphasizing that these
“celebrations of culture are all about love and have no place for hate and discrimination,” Dr. Fasih’s article encourages the people of Pakistan to celebrate Holi “
with an open mind, and more importantly, an open heart!”
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the moving force behind the World Culture Festival, explains the significance of Holi thus:
Holi is the festival of colors. This is one festival that
from centuries has been uniting people of all classes, castes,
age-groups and generations. Everyone comes together and celebrates the
oneness of humanity, and that is the message of Holi. If you leave a
group of kids in a room from all different backgrounds (rich, poor,
intelligent, not-so-intelligent), do you know how they’ll play? They
will play without finding any distinction between themselves. They will
play together.
Holi is a festival which unites people of diverse backgrounds and
professions. Society divides people, sometimes on the basis of
profession, sometimes on the basis of gender, sometimes based on
age-group. If there is a Chamber of Commerce meeting, only business
people go. For the Lions club meeting, only people from the Lion club
will go, Rotarians won’t go. So like this, the society has different
sections. Holi is a time where we break all the barriers of gender,
nationality, race, religion; from the elderly to the young, you hug
everybody, and put colors on them. It’s a unifying festival, a unifying
celebration.
In a world where we see entire societies riven by prejudice,
fanaticism, violence, divisions and disunity, it is human unity, harmony
in diversity, and celebration of culture that we need more of. Holi is
therefore a perfect choice for Pakistan. While ancient traditions like
Holi – the festival of colors, and Diwali – the festival of lights, were
erased from the Pakistani national and public space after Partition,
they are nevertheless native to the soil of Pakistan and are a part of
the native genetic memory and ethos.
The
making of Holi as a public Sindhi holiday is thus an extremely positive
step and the province and people of Sindh deserve to be mightily
congratulated and praised for this welcome step, this revolutionary
inclusion. The roster of public holidays and festivals of a
multicultural Pakistan will nevertheless be incomplete if Easter and two
other holidays, namely Diwali and Guru Nanak Jayanti, both of which are
native to the land, are still missing from the list.
Interestingly, the news that Sindh, a Pakistani province, has made
Holi a public holiday for all the people of the province, comes in the
immediate aftermath of the World Culture Festival. This may just be a
coincidence. One hopes however that the reverberations of the World
Culture Festival will inspire more and more people across the world to
transcend narrow, artificial boundaries and identities which prevent
humans from experiencing who they truly are as humans.
As HRH Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan,
the Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development of the United
Arab Emirates, an attendee at the World Culture Festival said-
Today, my colleagues and I are proud to be a part of you and the
One World Family. Like you, I hope that one day our family will also
embrace the entire population of the world, and the One world family
will be truly complete when everyone everywhere finally understands the
moral necessity of a culture of knowledge, understanding, kindness and
respect.
It is clear that even in the Middle East there is a realization
happening in some quarters at the highest levels about the idea of
vasudhaiva kutumbakam
and “the moral necessity of a culture of knowledge, understanding,
kindness and respect” for the entire population of the world, as the WCF
message of His Royal Highness Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan
indicates.
Many observers feel that Pakistan, born out of India, is unlikely to last long in its present form. Some analysts like
Syed Ata Hasnain believe
that Pakistan is headed towards implosion and that international
support – financial, military, and ideological – from countries China,
USA and Saudi Arabia, for example, is what is keeping Pakistan together.
Similarly,
Tarek Fatah, a renowned Canadian journalist and an expert on Pakistani politics and history who has recently drawn urgent attention to
Pakistan’s ongoing Baloch genocide, also considers Pakistan to be a
failed state and expects it to balkanize in our own lifetime.
If this happens, it is certain that Sindh, where the Islamization of
India began in 711 A.D., will become an independent country and will
refuse to remain yoked to Muslim West Punjab. It can be expected that
there will be many people who will want to return to their original
ancestral roots, just like the Kurds of northern Iraq who are now
returning to Zoroastrianism in significant numbers.
One of the reasons why India has faced constant jihad and has
constantly gotten diminished in size and psyche since 711 A.D. – the
year of the Arab conquest of Sindh by Mohammad Bin Qasim – is because
Indian civilization did little to take the knowledge of
dharma and philosophical and cultural concepts like
vasudhaiva kutumbakam
westwards after the Mauryan period. Similarly, the eastward
communication of Indic philosophy and civilizational values which had
been so effectively carried out, stopped after the Chola period as large
parts of Hindu South East Asia yielded to Islam. Indic civilizational
space has constantly shrunk since 711 A.D., and today what remains, i.e.
present day India, is just a moth-eaten central core.
Meanwhile, with jihad going global and all apocalyptic, and rapid
demographic changes in border regions underway, present-day India, just
like Europe, has never been as vulnerable to jihad internally as it is
now as. What the world needs now is once again for India to become a
powerful emitter of its message of wisdom and
dharma rather than a
passive receiver of failed, aggressive, external civilizational
influences. India, home to one-sixth of humanity, needs to become an
equal dialogue partner and an equal influencer in the shaping of the
culture and the destiny of a globalized humanity. Doing so, it will also
protect itself.
Dharmo rakshati rakshitah!
As the World Culture Festival and the spirit behind Holi reveal,
India, with its rich cultural heritage, philosophy, and wisdom has so
much to offer to the world. It is also true that while Indian
civilization has been the time capsule that has preserved the most
ancient and uplifting knowledge of
sanatan dharma, the wisdom, ideas, and ideals that radiate therefrom are universal and belong to all of humanity.
Spreading the message and wisdom of
vasudhaiva kutumbakam and other principles radiating from
sanatan dharma
is a need too important to be just left to volunteers at a time when
the entire world faces the prospect of devastation from jihad. It is now
the duty of the Government of India to make sure that an understanding
of the
knowledge and the possibility of sanatan dharma reaches each and every place on Earth, including Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world.
Moreover, India also needs to understand that this wisdom and
education, disowned and neglected in its own homeland for far too long,
has to be taught within and without. It has to be taught both at home
and abroad. The Home Ministry, the Ministry of Education, and the
Ministry of External Affairs should all look into this. The sharing of
the treasures contained in
sanatan dharma can only make the world a better place for everybody.
Shonu Nangia is an academic,
linguist, and translator-interpreter by training and works as an
Associate Professor of Foreign Languages at LSU-Alexandria (USA) where
he teaches French and Spanish. His scholarly work has appeared in
Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Michigan Academician,
Folia Linguistica et Literaria, The Journal of College Writing,
Louisiana Communication Journal, and a host of other places. He is also
the author of the book Male-Female Relations in the Literary Maghreb:
Poetics and Politics of Violence and Liberation in Francophone North
African Literature by Tahar Ben Jelloun. He also enjoys organizing film
festivals and yoga and meditation workshops.
भोपाल
(विसंकें). प्रांत प्रचारक अशोक पोरवाल जी ने कहा कि वर्तमान परिवेश में
जेएनयू, हैदराबाद एवं कश्मीर एनआईटी की घटनाओं से देश के युवाओं में गलत
संदेश जा रहा है. संघ की प्रेरणा से चलने वाला विद्यार्थी संगठन इन
चुनौतियों का डटकर सामना कर रहा है. देश को आज ज्यादा खतरा बाहरी शक्तियों
से नहीं, देश में छिपे हुये गद्दारों से है. युवाओं को आज देश हित में काम
करने के लिये गढ़ने की आवश्यकता है. अशोक जी राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ भोपाल
विभाग महाविद्यालय छात्रों की इकाई द्वारा अयोजित वार्षिकोत्सव कार्यक्रम
में संबोधित कर रहे थे.
कार्यक्रम
के मुख्य अतिथि प्रोफेसर अनूप स्वरुप, कुलपति जागरण लेक सिटी
विश्वविद्यालय ने कहा कि इस प्रकार के वार्षिकोत्सव से युवा कार्यकर्ताओं
का मनोबल बढ़ेगा और मातृभूमि की सेवा करने के लिये वे तत्पर रहेंगे. संघ के
अनुशासन से बहुत प्रभावित हुये हैं.
भोपाल
(विसंकें). प्रांत प्रचारक अशोक पोरवाल जी ने कहा कि वर्तमान परिवेश में
जेएनयू, हैदराबाद एवं कश्मीर एनआईटी की घटनाओं से देश के युवाओं में गलत
संदेश जा रहा है. संघ की प्रेरणा से चलने वाला विद्यार्थी संगठन इन
चुनौतियों का डटकर सामना कर रहा है. देश को आज ज्यादा खतरा बाहरी शक्तियों
से नहीं, देश में छिपे हुये गद्दारों से है. युवाओं को आज देश हित में काम
करने के लिये गढ़ने की आवश्यकता है. अशोक जी राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ भोपाल
विभाग महाविद्यालय छात्रों की इकाई द्वारा अयोजित वार्षिकोत्सव कार्यक्रम
में संबोधित कर रहे थे.
कार्यक्रम
के मुख्य अतिथि प्रोफेसर अनूप स्वरुप, कुलपति जागरण लेक सिटी
विश्वविद्यालय ने कहा कि इस प्रकार के वार्षिकोत्सव से युवा कार्यकर्ताओं
का मनोबल बढ़ेगा और मातृभूमि की सेवा करने के लिये वे तत्पर रहेंगे. संघ के
अनुशासन से बहुत प्रभावित हुये हैं.
