Freedom, Safety and Prosperity for All
Freedom, Safety and Prosperity for All
Dr M. D. Thomas
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‘Freedom, Safety and Prosperity for all’ is the pathway to social harmony and wellbeing. ‘Freedom’ would mean ‘self-determination in thought, word and deed. ‘Safety’denotes ‘security and wellbeing in all areas of life. ‘Prosperity’, in its turn, would imply ‘affluence all throughout life. ‘Prosperity for all’ signifies ‘collective welfareand happiness, always and everywhere’. ‘Freedom, safety and prosperity’is geared towards harmonious and peaceful living as human beings.
I believe, all of us have travelled by flight several times. As we take off from the runway, the higher we go, the larger is the picture of the ground we get. The borders seem to disappear and we are able to see the entire city in one glance. As we travel further, the earth appears to us as a single whole. This is a case in point for a global attitude to life and to achieving ‘harmony in social life’. We require rising from the local to the global, well, in view of having the entire world in one single glance.
Rabindra Nath Tagore has a poem, “Let my country awake”. It reads, “Where the mind is held high and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”. This is the way to freedom, in the right sense of the word.
Henry Valentine Miller says, “Our destination is never a place, it is a new way of looking at things”. We have to stop thinking as ‘individuals’ and start considering ourselves a ‘group’ or a ‘collection’, well, to be specific, a ‘family, a community, a nation, or a society’. In other words, we should no longer think as ‘I and me’, but ‘we and us’. This is the beginning of a new way of thinking, which leads us to social, economic, cultural and spiritual harmony. This is the sign of growing up as human beings, in the true sense. That indeed is our final as well as continual destination, too.
Robert Lee Frost, an American poet of the 19th-20th century, has a very remarkable poem titled “The Road not Taken”. It reads, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I have taken the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference”. ‘Thinking for oneself’ and ‘thinking for the other’ are the two roads. Vast majority of people choose to think for themselves. Well, they travel the road most people take. Only a small minority of people choose to think for the other. But they travel the road less travelled by. And, taking the road not taken or less travelled by most people makes all the difference, in the ultimate context. ‘Freedom, safety and prosperity for all’ is the outcome of thinking for the other, well, taking the road less taken by people.
‘Sustainable Development Goals 2030 of the United Nations’has a landmark idea as its central spirit, ‘leave no one behind’. More often than not, the human society follows a convenient logic called ‘might is right’. This is the motto of an autocratic model. ‘Taking everyone into consideration’ or ‘taking everyone along’ is the paradigm of a collective living. Such a paradigm considers the handicapped or disabled sections as well as the voiceless, the poor and other weaker sections. A preferential option, commitment and care for the lesser humans and those pushed to the margins outline the core spirit of leaving no one behind. In other words, this is the path towards making an inclusive society that is harmonious and peaceful.
Values are the ideals and principles that compose a meaningful human life. They are valued by someone or an organization. Value is the worth of something or someone. Values are universal in their essence and they apply to all, though in more or less degrees. They cannot be privatized or monopolized. They spill over the boundaries of caste, class, creed, culture, gender, language, ideology, nationality and other social traditions. Values are a shared reality. They are the ‘gifts of the same Creator’. They are the ‘common cultural heritage of the human society’, too. They uphold the ethos and ethics of human life. They are tools for making a society that is harmonious and peaceful. Values are like lighthouses. They are signals giving us direction, meaning and purpose, in favour of social and economic harmony in life.
The Constitution of India, its preamble in special, is a treasure of principles and values that human life requires. It secures for its citizens liberty or freedom of thought, expression, belief and worship. It also ensures social, economic and political justice and security. It assures equality of status and of opportunity. It promotes fraternity that ensures dignity of the individual, along with unity and integrity of the nation, which is a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic. These core values of the Constitution crisscross the universal values of all religious and secular traditions. They make sure the freedom, safety and prosperity of all citizens or human beings, as well.
‘Udaar charitaanaam’ makes ‘vasudhaivkutumbakam’ possible. In other words, ‘udaarcharitaanaam’ is the ethics of ‘vasudhaivkutumbakam’. The full quote goes thus, ‘one is a relative, the other is stranger, say the small-minded, vasudhaivkutumbakam, live the magnanimous’. ‘Be detached, be magnanimous, lift up your mind and enjoy the fruit of divine freedom’ is the message. One has to cease to be low-minded, divisive and discriminative, which is symbolic of the diabolic spirit. One has to keep travelling towards being good, noble, generous, upright and high-minded and thus humane, in view of being magnanimous enough to make a family out of the world feasible, as indicated by ‘vasudhaivkutumbakam’.
‘Vasudhaivkutumbakam’ is a concise Sanskrit phrase from Maha Upanishad, meaning ‘the world is one family’. Well, ‘all the living beings on earth are a family’. It is the most refined thought that can emerge from the human mind ever, divine as well as humane, too. It is the biggest truth about life. It is a symbol of positive thinking. It is the most leading moral value on earth. It is the most sublime social and spiritual principle. It is the core ethics of human life in this world. Measures for tolerance, respect, acceptance, friendship, fellowship, collaboration, peaceful co-existence, consensus, harmony, peace, and the like, are found on this way.‘Living like a family’ is the most balanced diet for the harmonious and peaceful living of the humans, as well. In sum, ‘vasudhaivkutumbakam’ is the best part of the human culture, characterized by ‘social, economic, cultural and spiritual harmony’, along with ‘freedom, safety and prosperity for all’.
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The
author is Director of Institute of Harmony and Peace Studies, New Delhi, and
has been committed to cross-cultural perspectives, cross-scriptural values,
constitutional values, interfaith relations, social ethics, communal harmony,
national integration and social wellbeing, for the past over 40 years. He
pursues the above mission through lectures, articles, books, messages, video
messages, conferences, social interactions, views at TV channels, and the like.
He could be contacted at ‘mdthomas53@gmail.com’.
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