The Maya of peaceful co-existence

The inability to see the good in another human, another race or another country lies at the epicentre of all simmering and manifest conflicts. How many of us, however wise we think we are, start with a preconceived notion of what is wrong with the other person and look for reinforcements to support our own hypothesis?

Sitting at our home in New York with the morning sun piercing the autumn clouds and warming my thoughts, I was juggling two significant events – the speech of the US President after his meeting with the cabinet in Israel and an eclectic discussion on the relationship between technologies that create the Metaverse and the projection of reality depicted in the Bhagavad Gita on the battlefield of Kurukshetra in the Mahabharata. And the thought crossed my mind – will this “maya” or illusion of a peaceful two- state co-existence between an ever-stronger Israel and ever-weaker Palestine ever see reality?

To answer this question in our own minds, we need to understand many of the questions that have been raised on this issue in the past and also the motivations of each of the players in this game. Listening to the extraordinarily crisp and Bhojpuri laced “class” of Khan Sir from Patna and the very erudite analysis by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, three unarguable vignettes of history emerge:

• The British Empire after overseeing the partition of India into India and East and West Pakistan in 1947, did a near repeat in 1948 when they created Israel and offered just less than half the land to the Palestinians, neatly broken into the West Bank and the Gaza strip. And in an additional twist of complexity, brought in the UN to administer Jerusalem, seen as the Holy Land for Christians, Jews and Muslims.
• For many Islamic nations including our neighbour Pakistan, Israel was and continues to be an aberration. The progressive conflicts with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and more recently the Hamas have done nothing for Islamic pride, as they watched successive wars whittling down the Palestine lands from an estimated 48% to 12% of the overall territory.
• Israel has developed into a proud and strong nation and built sustainable partnerships with Western nations, thanks to the substantial Jewish presence and influence in the US, UK and parts of Europe. India too has been a strong supporter of Israel and the progress of the country in innovation, technology and military strength has been admirable.

The questions that must be posed to separate the “Maya” from likely future reality are many – Will Hamas realise that every terrorist attack they unleash will result in a stronger Israel and great suffering to the innocent citizens who suffer the full force of retribution? Will the Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt watch as Israel exacts its revenge for a totally brutal killing and kidnapping of two hundred of its innocent citizens and puts the blame for the consequential thousand of deaths at the feet of the Hamas. And how long will a world which has promised to support Israel in its self-defence entreat Israel to renounce the “Example of power” for the “Power of example” and watch all noises of a two-nation co-existence become muter as a major war breaks out in that troubled part of the world?

At the time of writing this column, every thinking citizen of the world has a furrowed brow and no answers. By the time this is in print, some pointers to a solution may have emerged but the likelihood of a permanent peace will take a lot of statesmanship which many of the weak leaders of today will find difficult to forge. It took a Gandhi to choose a path of non-violence that finally got the British to “quit India” but where are the statesmen of the calibre of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King who could move people and nations with their humility and simple messaging?

The metaphor emerging from the Mahabharata does not work to resolve this conflict because of the absence of a Krishna to work with the Pandavas and ensure they fought an objective battle against the larger forces of the Kauravas. There is also the element of mutual hatred which is evident today between the Hamas and Israel that never helps in bringing wars to an early ceasefire and the reality of injured pride that is always a recipe for several rounds of destruction. And, there is no visionary to show the larger context of the Vishwarupa as a basis of understanding current realities to entities with vastly different motivations – Israel, Egypt, Iran, the Palestine Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah.

If I may be permitted to indulge in some philosophy, the inability to see the good in another human, another race or another country lies at the epicentre of all simmering and manifest conflicts. How many of us, however wise we think we are, start with a preconceived notion of what is wrong with the other person and look for reinforcements to support our own hypothesis? This reinforcement bias will be made stronger in the future with Artificial Intelligence personalising itself to feed our frenzies. I posed this question to the young researcher who is building the connection between the Metaverse and the Bhagavad Gita. Will our ability to manage our own emotions deteriorate as technology progresses and overrules human cognition? Only time will tell.

Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman of 5F World and the Lighthouse Communities Foundation.