deeply sympathy and condolences for those victim….

rendRa

Nothing can defeat India – its the last bastian of civility, humanity

look at how bravely ordinary indians face such attacks

westerners would have rioted against muslims by now!

Heckler & Koch MP5 is manufactured by Pakistan Ordnance Factories under license. That is quite a big give away.

I hope that, on Thanksgiving Day, our prayers extend to all of the people of India, and that they’re accompanied by a resolve to build a better world together.

Much has been written about how the Bush administration squandered much of the goodwill and understanding felt by people worldwide toward the US after the 9-11 attacks. Instead, that administration exploited American fears and xenophobia for a military-industrial driven agenda that transformed that goodwill into worldwide animosity toward the US. I tend to agree with that analysis, although I don’t believe it goes far enough, and that it assumes that we’re beyond a point of being to realize the lost potential for positive change.

Such a desire, I believe, has been there all along just beneath the surface. In the most recent presidential election, a majority of the American people cast their votes in favor of an American foreign policy that seeks common cause with the rest of the world, rather than seeking power through a policy of divide and conquer. And in the wake of that glorious victory of our new president-elect, people worldwide joined in widespread spontaneous celebrations of the possibilities of a new era, led by someone whose family roots and life experience have instilled in him an ethos of respect for the fundamental interconnections that can ultimately serve to bring us together as a world community.

In my own case, my empathy is also driven by the fact that I have walked the streets of south Mumbai, on a life-transforming trip to India with my mom twenty years ago. For her, it was a return to land that had helped shape her consciousness as a young teacher 35 years before. For me, it was a chance to share in that journey, and to draw my own lessons from a land filled with both unbelievable beauty and unimaginable desolation. Our first meal was in a restaurant in the Taj Hotel, followed by a walk around that neighborhood with our Bombay-based host family, whose missions work included service to the homeless boys who lived in the alleyways that surrounded in the shadow of the nearby Marble Arch.

You don’t have to have been there to imagine what the people of Mumbai are living through, without the notion of somehow discounting what’s happening, because “those people” have somehow come to expect such violence. It’s true that this is a land that has often experienced destructive civil violence. However, like the US, India is also a land of multi-faceted complexity and seemingly contradictory realities, as a vastly successful democratic experiment where people from radically different backgrounds and cultures manage miraculously, on most days, to all get along. And, of course, it is the homeland of Mahatma Gandhi, whose legacy is directly linked to our own civil rights movement through Dr. King’s own legacy, and therefore to a history that made possible all of the optimistically transformative promise represented by our new president. This is the backdrop of hope against which these horrific events are playing out. I hope and pray that as individuals and as a government we find a way to reach out to our brothers and sisters in India and in every corner of the world where violence, poverty, and injustice intrude. Gandhi’s disciple, Dr. King, spoke of an overarching arc of freedom that transcended the setbacks of the moment. Let’s work together to bend the world away from violence, and toward the goal of social justice for all.