Dialogue Among Civilizations-Kapil Kapoor-23 ... - Panjabi Alochana

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The opposition between monotheism and pluri-theism has been the other rich source of culturalclash and conflict. There is this philosophic monism and theological monotheism. It is inopposition to pluralism and pluri-theism. The imperative of one God is the imperative of myGod as against yours and of my one God against your gods. My God is true and your God isfalse; my God is light, your gods are darkness.The theological monism, the presence of one God, is at the root of the conflict model of humanprogress so clearly visible in the western culture.It is significant that in the Western tradition, ‘knowledge’ has been opposed to innocence, isassociated with ‘power’ and leads to the Fall of man. The Renaissance marked theontological shift from God to Man/Nature and the epistemological shift from verbal authorityand experience to reason and experiment. What is, however, common throughout the Westernhistory of ideas is the man-centered world-view. In the middle ages, God is the object ofstudy for the sake of man, for his Redemption. Renaissance onwards, focus shifts to Nature asthe object of study for the sake of man. It is interesting that a marked adversarial axis hasalways obtained between the western man and his object of study. It is almost as if man isalways threatened by, or is at the least in the presence of, an adversary who has to be subduedor neutralised or used in the interest of man.Internally, within the Western society, God entered into this adversarial relationship with man– seeking obedience from him, punishing him [10] in the Middle Ages. Now Nature becomesthe great adversary and the new knowledge, Science, is put to service to bend nature to man’spurpose. In the nineteenth century, it is man or a class of men against man or a class of menin the class-war of the Marxist doctrine, and now in the twentieth century it is woman againstman. The Hebraic man-centered view that subordinates everything to man’s comfort is theobvious foundation for this conflict model that informs practically all the western disciplinarycodes - sociological, economic, and political and is at the heart of the Darwinian evolutionarythought as well.Externally, the other has been the adversary. He is enveloped in darkness and it is the missionof the believers to evangelise by proselytising. Knowledge is an instrument of power in thisconflict model, an instrument to handle the ‘adversary’. In the Old Testament, we havealready noted, man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,and over the cattle, and over all the earth….” [11] The Western man has been granted thisdominion and has treated it as a matter of his right to maintain and extend this dominion. Therise of sciences and the new power of technology are now put to this end. And as the Westernhistory shows, this ‘organised’ knowledge has often proved destructive. Its power rests on theauthority of ‘truth’ it attains through societal and institutional support. At a given time in theWestern history, there has always been a dominant ‘truth’ of the time. This is theconsequence of the Hebraic monistic imperative. There is in the western mind, a monisticimperative – a ‘truth’ at a time. Between the dichotomies, only one is true and has to becognised and then adhered to. This imperative is driven by the uncompromising monism ofthe Hebraic worldview. [12] Only one step from this is the drive to convert, failing which, todestroy the other.Thus the monistic, monotheistic, bibliolatrous, institutionalized cultures form one set. Thepluralistic, pluri-theistic, idolatrous, non-institutionalized cultures form the other set. The firstset, considering their history, may be designated as ‘predators’; the second set similarly maybe designated as ‘fodder’. The only exception, the Jews, have moved out of their native
predator group by virtue of not sharing the twin cultural imperatives of iconoclasm andevangelism. In fact by virtue of their historical experience, they are distinguished members ofthe fodder set.Let us have a brief look at the attested experience of some of these cultures. Remember thatviolence and conflict have taken place both between the fodder and the predator cultures andbetween the predator cultures themselves. The cause and character are different – in the firstcase it is sanctified explicitly as a religious mission; in the second case, it is a fight for thedistribution or possession of territory. The degree of vandalism differs in the two cases.The Jewish experience is too well known: their Diaspora, wanderings through time, theinquisition in Southern Europe, spread through Europe and Russia, the holocaust, and thestruggle for survival in their homeland. It has been one long story of persecution and violencedirected at their very being.The Books of Jeremiah are living records of their suffering, the paradigm of their recurrentexperience. Lamentations of Jeremiah may be quoted as a representation of their typicalexperience. Mournful Jeremiah sings the miseries of Zedekiah, the King of Jerusalem:“Then the King of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah in Riblah before his eyes: also theKing of Babylon slew all the nobles of Judah.“Moreover he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and bound him with chains, to carry him to Babylon.”[13]This is a universal narrative. He then sings the miseries of the people:“The Lord …hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hathincreased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.“The elders…sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads;they have girded themselves with sackcloth; the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their headsto the ground.“Mine eyes do fail with tears…because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets.“They say to their mothers, Where is corn and where is wine?“The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men arefallen by the sword.“Fear and snare is upon us, desolation and destruction.“Our inheritance is turned strangers, our houses to aliens.“Princes are hanged up by their hands:“The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.“They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.“The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.” [14]This is a universal narrative of subjugation, dispossession and destruction. One need not givename to it. The Jews suffered persecution and they were forced out of their homeland ormoved out for a life free of persecution. The Zoroastrian experience replicated the JewishDiaspora – they now live, the last few of them, in India, after they fled their homeland in the7th century and are on the verge of extinction. The Bahais moved over and are in India. AndTibetans fled their homeland and came to India in 1961. The Jews apparently have ahomeland; but they are completely vulnerable today – they have been gathered together fromtheir wide grazing lands and herded into a pen that is the state of Israel.
Page 1 and 2: Challenges to peaceful and creative
Page 3: Almighty God is blasphemous and pre
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Dialogue Among Civilizations-Kapil Kapoor-23 ... - Panjabi Alochana

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