Conflicts

"I am afraid of certain words like fear, crime and foolishness.

I'm fascinated by certain words like brave, cool and peace.

But sometimes to be peaceful you have to grasp what is within fear.

And to avoid foolishness you have to be criminal.

To keep a voice innate you will have to be fool before so many.

I'm undergoin tremendous change in my mental make up. Trying to be able to accommodate so many bitter terms and be unconditional. I dont know where the ways will lead me to. But to be static is no dream, no truth and no goal. So I take up the journey now, if you meet me agin with same health richness and sanity, lets smile."

["bitter world. better world." by Sree, Towards a Language of My own]

She was responding to a talk we listened to at a seminar on Peace we attended,
trying to answer her inner and outer conflicts in this context.

Someone said at the seminar: "Conflicts are not necessarily negative. Without conflicts, you are static. Dead." And he concluded his talk saying dialogues are the right way towards resolving conflicts, not negotiations.

I found that observation interesting. The dialogue he talks about is not just between the State and Militant outfits. The dialogue between people, finding common areas to work with..

As we had observed before in this diary, our identities are becoming more and more rigid, and we are talking less and less. "The other" is becoming our enemy.

Can we hope to get back to friendly dialogues? I'm not sure. We have done enough damage to such prospects already. As a nation, as people, as religions.. But I still believe that is the way to go if we are to move towards a more harmonic existence (I'm not talking about one without conflicts).

I will sign off with a link to an article by the above mentioned speaker: Another 9/11, Another Act of Terror [pdf file].

"In this essay, I intend to narrate a story of another September 11, a story from the margins. It is the story of an ‘attack on democracy’, carried out not by ‘terrorists’ on a ‘suicide mission’, or through a military coup, but by the state in what is called the world’s ‘largest democracy’, and through an instrument of state terror on a section of its own population.."