Parenthood as Vocation! Any takers!!

Monkey and her baby, Image Source: Internet

Career oriented parents

In a faculty room, once a gossip was going on. I'm half attentive to their talk, while going through exercise papers. Someone, a married lady said, 'better take a baby from shelf'. It caught my attention, but I didn't move my head. It was an unfamiliar elite talk in fashion. There was a lump in my throat. A feeling of nausea was building up inside. At last, humans too are commodity now!

The statement, ‘Taking a baby from shelf’ is like taking ready food packets from a grocery shop; It is an occupation, not a profession, and not at all vocation; it is a labour unpaid-for.

It amounts to building up career, by default, if not design! What is the   motivation behind this temptation? If it is a newly found freedom by the elite, it amounts only falling in fire from frying pan! To understand this, we need to go beyond established rationale of our decadent, fragmented mass society.

Without going into details such as, single mother or single father, live-in relationship, contract marriage, family planning, population explosion, sperm donator, surrogate mother, child adoption etc. We go straight for the parenthood.

Propagation is a plan by Nature

Procreation or Propagation is directly related to the survival of species. It is one of the Five Autonomous Functions bestowed by Nature to all the living beings – plants and animals (human animals included). The other four autonomous functions are Work, Leisure, Learning and Health. These, of course, are facilitated by Nature's schema of Environment, Ecology and Energy for the survival of species.

For example, a cat shift her just born kittens (they are born blind) to safe places to protect them from male cat eating them. Birds – male and female parents – feed their chicks in the nests, until they learn to fly. A lamb, as soon as born, stands on four legs and starts jumping and running around. Fishes lay eggs or fries in shallow waters among reeds etc., in hundreds or more; their survival rate is unenviable.

A plant in summer

And plants! They are the most blessed species: they propagate in various ways. Some of them are pollination by birds, animals, insects who survive on them! Dormant seeds, in millions, germinate as soon as rains begin. If uninterrupted by humans, the plants could grow into wild forests. They could engulf mighty buildings, monuments such as, Angkor in Asia.

Perhaps the human infant faces most precarious conditions from the birth. S/he is fully dependent for their survival on others. Tarzan myth indeed is exemplary, about parenthood.

Formative Age and Learning

The most pertinent question remains. Can social institutions, such as schools, orphanages, hospitals, homes for the aged etc. compensate the need for parenthood?

Family is not an institution, it is basically a unit of a community — a cohesive collective — which gives identity to every individual. The Institutions such as schools, governments etc. are faceless enteritis, where an individual cannot have ethical or moral relationship. For this reason they offer titles and awards.

Formative Age

Family and Community, both, offer building up and flowering of the new born persons at their Formative Age, with culture, values, morality, character, altruism, life supporting skills. This is best illustrated among adivasi – tribal communities. This 'action of building and flowering' of a person is not possible for any school in 'mass education system', even if one may claim to be progressive! They produce 'graded stereotypes'.

Thus teaches Buddha

By our mass education system, designed by the experts who are brought up by the same system, we too think within the same system — within the box. This goes on and on for decades, except for few adjustments and readjustments.

Family or Household

Thankfully Industrialization has successfully turned traditional societies into homogenised mass society, split the joint family into nuclear families, and finally, ended the family too.

Now, a 'family' is popularly called 'household'. It is a unit in the 'Mass Society' not a Community’. Household could be anything: even a group of migrant youths or adults in search of skills, jobs in towns or cities. They have no identity other than their 'occupation'. It is variously called, for example, 'housewife', not mother or grandmother. There the matter ends for the purpose of various surveys; it is useful data for the managers of the country's affairs.

In a country like India, there is so much diversity because of disparity in access to education. It is not that the so-called masses are uneducated: they do sustain by their education, though unrecognized by the system or the government!

Who is supposed to think in such a scenario? Any person — a citizen, young or old — can use creative thinking going beyond the stereotypical daily actions and notions. Everyone is blessed by creativity and personal space; even while doing daily mimicry in occupation.

If everyone practices Creativity, then perhaps Democracy shall begin at grassroots, not at the top rungs of social hierarchies!

And the children! We make them carry heavy school bag packs, books, notebooks and the  subjects... added by the periodical whims of the educationists, and now gadgets such as mobile phones and computers. We want them to be better citizens, before they come of age! In return what do they receive? Chaos perennial!

Complexities of modern urban society pose many challenges to parents. By admitting children to schools at age of three, their social life begins even before they have developed many physical and mental faculties. They enter into an alien world. We hardly know how it influences their Formative Age. A child depends fully on exposure s/he gets, first, at the family and immediate neighbourhood (streets included), then follows the peer group. Later on their public life that begins in formal education which is ready to influence them!

Parenthood is Vocation, not an Occupation

We need to assess and re-asses social situation again and again in the present flux. It may vary for each person or family in each strata of society. The overall situation, however, creates Alienation and Identity Crisis. In such a situation, parenthood is not an occupation, but a vocation which calls for attention, thinking, and meditation; and to reach wise strategies; it may change with every child, and every parent!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Big Nations, Small Nations or Community Republics

Big Nations, Small Nations or Community Republics:

Aborigine Republics as Model for a Million Nations

Srishtiyoga means Reunion with Mother Nature

John Papworth often and rightly acclaims the Fourth World of ethnic communities... and small nations: Indeed 'small is beautiful'! That is, the autonomy – self-empowerment – of communities.

He, also, often says large nations will break up (which may include India). We saw break up of the USSR, and, also, coming together of European nations, the formation of EU. Perhaps both have been victims of economy in the present era!

Every region has its own natural, cultural, and prevailing political / economic conditions. The West grew with industrialization. However, the First World India, which often depends upon external aids, cannot be put on the same rank that of the EU or the US. The difference is it has no physical borders.

Even Urban India today cannot be called the First World India, because of the widespread presence of slum dwellers and the squatters, who are displaced and migrated from rural India.

There are more than 600,000 villages in India, where 70% Indians live, even after many have migrated to urban areas; no one knows 'how many'. (The Census Surveys miss the data of squatters in urban areas and along transit lines.) This is where the mainstream India is.

The Fifth World India

In Mumbai, they – the slum dwellers – are about 60 to 70 millions. So also in other metropolitan cities and towns.

The slum dwellers and squatters in urban areas belong to the Fifth World India -- the world of the marginalized, displaced and destitute in their homeland.

In this age of Information Technology, a very few may, or may not, perceive what ‘India’ is beyond the word Nation and the related dogmas. Even the idea of ‘Swaraj’, the self-rule, is fashioned after the British Raj, faces the same dilemma.

India may be better understood by an example of plants. Because plants have fewer needs than even animals.

In a patch of virgin forest several plant species coexist, so also wildlife, but certainly not the humans of advanced civilized societies. For them forest is for ruthless consumption or aesthetics of visual hedonism (tourism industry).

A large banyan spreads over centuries, over a large area and by its adventitious roots supports and balances itself. India is somewhat like that, now, of course, affected by the parasite of mega-cities -- the icons of centralized power in the civilized society.

Plants / forests don’t recognize the notion of 'nation'; so also many Indians. This idea of 'nationhood' cannot be measured by the ‘standards’, set by any authority or the so-called superior cultures. Their superiority, even in this age, is based on power of wealth, science-technology-economy-market and/or military! Isn't it barbarism!

Small nations or big nations! The quality of their citizens' personal and collective life at micro level remains to be assessed. It is impossible even at a town level.

Sample surveys at regional, national or international level are merely eyewash. They only pamper the ego of various vested interests - local or Global.

Nationhood needs to be tested on continued basis at micro-level of every individual's wellbeing in the functioning of the State! Indeed a tall claim! Any of the most efficient technology today is not capable to do this task. It is not as easy as sending a spaceship.

Clearly the Industrial Revolution, through science and technology, has failed to deliver the promised 'Utopia', called social and economic development, to mankind.

May be it has strengthened the powers of a miniscule minority section of Industrial Society. There is nothing to deify them, as the elite tend to do.

The science and technology are still in incubation stage — five thousand years of civilized society is pittance in geological time!

"For they know not what they do." And to know, what kind of and magnitude of calamity should befall upon them?

There is still a way out for the educated ignorant. There still exist numbers of republics of Aborigine Communities that hail from remote ancient times. They still exist in India and rest of world. Their time-tested wisdom helps them to sustain in spite of the onslaught by civilized societies. Their life-line is, in one word, Srishtiyoga, i.e. continued "Reunion with Mother Nature".

Aborigine Republics as Model for a Million Nations

Aborigine communities are "republics". This is not a concept but their millennia old unwritten practice.

These republics do not relate to the civilized concept or notion of 'nation', which is based on "ownership of land" and "centralized power" in civilized societies from beginning, or the start of "Urban Revolution".

The very civilized idea of "ownership of land" is most evil concept and is the "root cause" of all the strife mankind has been going through for 5000 years.

This statement will certainly not be palatable even to the atheist, agnostic or socialist sects, or not even to the so-called religious who believe in any branded God, or not even our friend John Papworth!

The suggestion to give-up "Ownership of Land" would amount to worst sacrilege of all; worst than "Original Sin".

There is lot to learn about a few fundamental things of living in harmony with Nature for us from the aborigines.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Warli tribal customs

Traditions are a living history among the aborigine and ethnic communities. They, perhaps, understand the meanings and mysteries embedded in their customs, rite and rituals etc. by their grooming, intrinsic in their nature  I wonder if this is true today with the civilized societies: I wouldn’t claim that I understand.

“Brother, it is not a picnic. It is like fasting” 

Here is a custom that is an environmental action.
Tribal do not treat the house as merely a shelter. They personify house and village, just as earth and river are mothers. Warli and Katkari tribes have a tradition of observing a day in a year: On that day, all the members of village community go out of the village across it s border. That day on one cooks at home neither remains at home. They carry their utensils, foodstuff, water, and firewood for cooking meals. They perform a religious rite and sacrifice a goat at the place where there are sacred masts erected by the tribal. It is the sacred site on the border of the village. A woman heads and conducts the ceremony. She stands in trance for nearly two hours, and then conducts the ritual. Outside the border of the village, the families cook their own meals, eat and return home in the evening. Prakash Sutar, a teenage Warli, explains the custom without mincing the words, “Brother, it is not a picnic. It is like fasting”.

(Extract, The end piece: Cleansing, the last paragraph, from “Warli House and Habitat-1").

 There are number of occasions when entire community meets, 

have meals together, drinking toddy singing and dancing.

For an aborigine, a person, though no more, is not a part of chronological history, but a vital essence to nurture body, mind and spirit. For example, an ancestral worship, more than a ritual, is a renewal of community bond. A most outstanding example is that of Ekalavya in Epic Mahabharata. The Bhill tribes continue to this date “not to use their thumb in archery” in the memory of Ekalavya – their ancestor in the distant past.

Among the Warli tribe there is a custom. After harvest, “gods” visit house after house in their hamlet. They predict if the coming times will prove to be of plenty or shortage by measuring the heaps of harvested grain. They don’t measure the entire heap. They are given grains in a bamboo pan which they measure.

 This occasion of community meals took place 

soon after harvest at a Warli hamlet, when we visited them.

Well, the “gods” are a group of guys from the community; they could be any persons from the hamlet / settlement. They are not branded to be gods permanently. They are gods only during this event. These gods do not turn to be “god persons” – swamis and Baba – as in the civilised societies who generally exploit the faithful.

By this custom, I suppose, the whole community knows who has earned how much wealth – the harvested grain – fruits of the labour: No secrets! There are many meaningful customs among the aborigine tribes full of wisdom.

This is in contrast to urban elite society, who is touchy about personal privacy and secrecy – among persons, among families, among groups! The governments, too, are bound by wows of secrecy, while the public debate goes on upholding transparency and governance!

Remigius de Souza

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Companionship is not a Concept

ON MY LIFELONG PATHWAY I gave up my futile desire for companionship even for a long or short period of meeting point. It, however, happened after my migration (for education) from my native village to Mumbai city – a transition from Natural Environment to Urban Environment.

Our social life is transient; friends, family members, relatives, co- workers, and now everyone spinning fast on different orbits seeking identity, to prove concept of individuality.
 
Such is the dominance of living in Virtual Reality, propagated by ET-IT Age, embedded either in the bygone Past, or in Future that is  speculation: in the decadent society and disintegrating family. 

To restore Companionship is possible only in a Community and Habitat, both at a Human Scale.

Community is a cohesive collective in true spirit of democracy. Any civilized society being based on hierarchy cannot be democratic. Whereas, Global Village is misnomer, an illusion projected by profiteers and power mongers.  
  
Companionship & Community still persist among Aborigine tribes in India and elsewhere.   

Companionship is neither a concept nor altruism. It's natural way for the species, plants or animals. A plant when is in a community bears fruits in abundance, along with others. rather than that stands single in a field: None faces Identity Crisis, like Post-historic Man.
 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Indira’s Emergency Recalled – 2

Indira’s Emergency Recalled – 2

The Emergency (1975-77) imposed by India Gandhi made a mark of state terrorism, but with difference; it targeted the elite. It became a landmark of decadence. As I said before, it didn’t make even a ripple among the tribal and peasants, because they had/have nothing to loose. It, as usual, was born out of insecurity of those who held centralized power. However the seeds of terrorism have always been dormant in the pre-independence eras.

There have been other examples of state terrorism that targeted the people who protested the policies and practices, for example, the protest of the farmers against the compensation to be paid for land acquisition for the Thal-Vaishet project by the Government of Maharashtra when some farmers were shot dead. There are many more examples.

Indira’s Emergency also made a way for other forms of terrorism, widespread across the country in the following years, which continues till now. Terrorists’ attacks on public and private properties including one on the Parliament, the communal riots, and atrocities by the Naxalite, etc. are considered as criminal acts against the society at large. The glaring examples are the riots in Gujarat and the turmoil of peasants in Nandigram, which is burning on the eve of Divali - the festival of lights - in West Bengal, where one may question the role of the state. The tribal and the peasants are increasingly displaced from their homestead and/or are forced to commit suicides by the strong-arm of money-market-political powers.

All these acts of terrorism are initiated, managed and manipulated by the elite in high places. Their weapons as well as targets are ‘common’ people, or the second class citizens, who blindly fall for the incitement by those who hold power to create unrest and disrupt people, thereby the society at large.

But their real weapons that come handy are the widespread poverty, illiteracy, social-economic disparity and the lack of education in the fast changing environment. The root cause is the glaring lack of civic sense and hygiene – physical, mental and spiritual – at personal and collective levels, from the top to bottom – from princes/presidents/prime ministers to the paupers on a street. No occupation or profession or vocation or institution is an exception. To find an exception, we may have to search with microscope in the present fragmented and decadent global society.

At an individual level I neither can vouch for others nor for myself. While I was practicing as an architect planner I realized then, and later, how many holes I must have made in an ozone layer in my sphere! A sin, for example, committed in architecture (shelter?) and planning could be comparable to the mythical idea of Original Sin (see: Bible), which can never be absolved. The damage done to Life and to Mother Earth is permanent. Look at devastated Chernobyl!

Perhaps a simplistic answer to a question of civic sense and hygiene is to restore community, not communality; to restore plurality not dogmatic polarity; to restore holistic, not deductive, view of life; to restore leisure, not speedy pleasures; to restore universal education, not fragmented information; to recycle people’s time-tested wisdom, not graft compartmentalized expertise… You can go on adding to this litany: all issues address to civic sense and hygiene at local to global level. Industrialization has failed to supply quality to living is already proved beyond doubt.

Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
09.11.2007

____________________________________
Remigius de Souza
Post Mail: 69-243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400028, INDIA
My poetry homepage:
www.poetsindia.com/poet/Remigius+de+souza/

Architecture of Diatoms

Architecture of Diatoms: Design Teachers' Dilemma

by Remigius de Souza

So far more than 70,000 species of diatoms are documented each with uniquely shaped shell. Shells range in size from millionth of meter to thousand times as large, and can very in structure (New Scientist, 17 January 2004).There is no scientific definition of life, says James Lovelock, and gives its attribute, “Life is social. It exists in communities and collectives … homeostasis or ‘the wisdom of the body’ is a colligiative property of life” (The Ages of Gaia, OUP. 1988, P.18).

This is evident in algae as well as bacteria in the gut.The attribute to design in Nature is cryptically described by Martin Jones bio-archaeologist, “In whole organisms, randomness structure is uncommon. Everything seems finely tuned by brutal rigours of natural selection. There are no spare limbs to be found and hardly any dispensable organs. This forced economy of organism design has always limited the use of bodily form as evolutionary timepiece” (The Molecular Hunt, Penguin 2002). He gives most apt definition of design for any artefact from product design to regional planning, and institutions by humans.

Institutes that teach architecture obviously aspire to produce geniuses on their assembly lines; the students, however, produce homogenised designs.

Algae’s habitats are ocean, river, lake, pond etc.
~~~~~~
Remigius de Souza

One Step Quantum Leap in Education

Illustration 1: Children at Play
The children are at play at the bank of River Narmada at Bharuch City, Gujarat.

There are many dimensions to this event: Discovery (without Copy Right), leisure and learning by sharing, sense of community, free entertainment that helps health of body and sanity of mind. Besides they are swimmers. They would learn rowing, and fishing in course of time, i.e. higher education without fees, without grading, without failures... every one is accepted. They are familiar with the environment around: high tide and low tide, with that the change in water taste, the wild life, and also the presence of crocs in part of the river.
There is unconditional belief and trust that river is mother. Even any event mishap or demise is taken as part of life. And there are many more dimentions...

----

One Step Quantum Leap in Education

by Remigius de Souza

Education is one of the vital four links, i.e., work, education, leisure and health to the development of an individual and the community / society / collective (Ill. 1). There are two prevailing education systems: one is universal, which is still followed by a majority that is not yet caught in the web of industrialisation, and the other - institutionalised mass education - is induced by the industrial revolution that took place in the West (Ill. 2).

EDUCATION, WORK, LEISURE AND HEALTH are four aspects through which plants, animals and humans follow the daily living throughout their life-span. Though they are categorized here (because of Author's civilised habits) in reality every aspect is synchronised with, or embedded in, the other three, and are supportive to each other. They neither are in sequence of priority nor separated in compartments. Any one without the other three is lame or invalid or unstable, which could cause mental or physical maladies or malfunctioning in a person and/or the collective.

More advance a civilised society more the division, fragments, hierarchies; all neatly put in various compartments, including the four mentioned above. It helps the ruler / ruling minority to control people by "Divide and Rule" principle. Throughout the history the advanced societies have successively and progressively been proved a curse on land, waters, people and life at large. The industrial civilisation is the worst of them all. It is also a double-faced liar. For example, it would hold population increase for the poverty, hunger and starvation. It would hold the entire humanity responsible for the climate change, rising sea level, depleting ozone layer, rising temperature etc.

Illustration 2: Education Systems
(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning
(b) Linear reductionist mass education by teaching

(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning.

Education here, as said earlier, goes with other three aspects: Work, Leisure and Health. Education is a life-long quest for excellence and fulfilment of the Self, neither for expertise nor personality development as is an in-thing in the modern society.


It works with free sharing / exchange of knowledge, accumulated over generations, between individuals and communities, which lead to improvisation. Even the aborigines today do not live in proto-historic state.

Education, here, is not a slot; it is interdisciplinary, and finds its application simultaneously to support sustenance with life-supporting skills. There is no room for superficial baggage, no need for grades like fruits graded for marketing.

At any point in its quest it - an individual - is full in itself and yet leaves scope for growth - development, like a seedling until it is fully grown in its life-span of four months, or eighty years or thousand years, until death. Qualitatively there is no difference, whether it is rice plant, or a human being, or a banyan tree.

For example, its model is present in the Third World India and the Forth World India (of the tribal communities). Or one may notice it in the remote history when humans came up with fire, lever, wheel, language, paintings, engravings, domestication of plants and animals, when none of this institutionalised education system was present. Ironically no one can fit this experiential holistic education in the prevailing institutionalised education system.

For example, architecture is fairly interdisciplinary course in the modern mass education. To his dismay the author observed for nearly twelve years while teaching that it couldn't reach a holistic level. No, holistic doesn't click. Almost all the students learn in slots, think in slots, and eventually work in slots. Invariably they turn out to be a part of bureaucratic ladder. They also develop autocracy to some extent. Perhaps the seeds are sown begins from their nursery schooling at the age of three!


(b) Linear, or the ladder of, reductionist mass education by teaching



It is based on grading and degrading the human intelligence. Started by the industrial revolution, it is designed for the benefit of capitalism and for easy management by the bureaucrats who claim to be educationists. Any adjustments / readjustments in the system remain within the established framework.


For example, a number of schools started by J. Krihnamurti - the Star of the East - at several places. After giving talks worldwide for decades on 'freedom from the known' he too could not escape 'institutions' started in his name during his lifetime. Such is the grip of capitalism! Even Red China's Star is eclipsed by it. And how many democratic governments do bend or bow before the global or local capitalist institutions - the invisible superpowers?
industrialisation (sometimes called 'social and economic development') is only an orientation of mind, a small fragment in Life, and cannot be called universal in any of its branch, or all the branches of its education and expertise put together. Education and the products from its assembly lines in this system is merely a consumer item for marketing. No wonder the First World countries are now trying to find new markets for their education industry in the Third World countries.


Now research and studies are showing some of the side effects and after-effects of the affluence of western societies. We cite some examples here."The average age at menarche - when periods start - has plummeted over the past 150 year in western societies from around 17 years old to 12 to 13." writes Mairi Macleod (New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p.38). This has social, physical, psychological, and moral if any, implications.


"Peter Gluckman of the University of Aukland, New Zealand, suggests, the problem however, is that in our complex modern society, the amount we learn means that we mature psychosocially much later than our forebears did. This creates a mismatch between the stage at which we are able to reproduce and the time when we have the social competence to cope with it. In his new book Mismatch: Why our world no longer fits our bodies (written with Mark Hanson) he suggests that radical changes in education are needed to help bridge this gap" (Ibid p. 40).


Psychiatrist Bruce Parry, in his interview, tells, "In the US alone, every year there are at least half a million cases of children found to have suffered from severe trauma or neglect. So at any time there are going to be between 8 to 10 million children with profound trauma or neglect-related dysfunction. ... If you look at a society that's badly affected by famine or war, then those numbers climb still higher", ('Nobody's children', interview by Liz Else, New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p 42)." He is a co-author of 'The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog'. (see http://www.childtrauma.org/ )


These examples relate only to children. What might be the situation of women, adult and the aged in the western societies? We only look the glamorous part and the affluence of the West. But the point is any person who has alert senses and observation would notice the changes that are taking place, or would honestly admit that s/he is not capable of looking after a child; perhaps animals would take better care of them: Parry fails to mention this in his interview.



There is no alternative


There is no alternative to the universal holistic education. It is organic and natural, and living beings, from bacteria (our ancestor in the distant past) to humans, have the learning ability bestowed by Nature. When a government has no ability to listen to the people, any democratic society must take its own charge, and restore their autonomy to educate themselves. In the present global circumstances, in the fast changing environment, which is forced by a few powerful, the people must accelerate their learning by their natural gift. That is, they must know, like the cells in their bloodstream, their enemy, and fight.

Any democratic government must recognise the people's education - knowledge and skills - in all the aspects of Education, Work, Leisure and Health. It must not victimise or suppress them by forcing alien systems upon them by taking them for granted. The people also should be spared from religious, racial, caste-ridden, linguistic, provincial fanaticism and fundamentalism, which is invented by the so-called higher-ups for their vested interest for the power. Last but not the least the hordes of activists, who are also the product of the industrialised mass education, should take some pain to learn from the people, and also change themselves. And avoid pushing them into the scramble on the ladder.

There are answers to all human follies. But there must be will to correct by drastic action: the gangrene growing on the society must be severed before it corrupts the entire body.First: recognise the people's education by legislative and legal action, not by lip-service, not by capitalising it, not by authority. The author of this article is not an authority, the people are.This must be coupled by the collective action to protect, preserve, restore, revitalise, renovate, and enhance the existing universal holistic system by legal and financial support.

After gaining the political independence, the people naively believed it is "our government", only to be disillusioned by the feudal mentality of its legislative and executive bodies, decade after decade. The political implications are clear: now face the hung parliaments and assemblies one after another, riots and terrorist acts, deaths by starvation and suicides, piracy in almost every field... the evil seeds of civil war are being sown by vested interests - the enemy within.



~~~~~~

Remigius de Souza

69/243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400 028, India
(04-03-2007)

Remi's poetry homepage>> www.poetsindia.com/poet/Remigius+de+Souza/

The Pope and the Prophet

The Pope and the Prophet
by Remigius de Souza

Thank heavens and hells here, and the Earth, which is mutilated by the civilised societies, that Pope Benedict XVI, or any other Pope, is neither Jesus nor Prophet.

The Pope is the head of the church, the oldest and largest, and perhaps one of the richest multinational corporations (MNCs); a Pope who claims authority is not exceptional. With the blood-soaked history of the Church behind, he quotes some insignificant long forgotten emperor – the sword in the hands of the Church; it suits him well. He didn’t find any quote from Jesus, the Son of God, or any prophesy by Him that there shall be Mohammad who shall have a link to Ishmael, a son from Abraham’s concubine, Hagar, his Egyptian slave, etc. etc.

The Buddha preached Ahinsa – non-violence, Jesus preached Love, Mohammad brought a message of peace, the religion of universal brotherhood; they had historical role to play. In his formative years of teenage the pope had flirtations with Hitler and Nazism; how would it surface in times to come, and how would Universal Church function? Wait and watch.

We have heard that one of the disciples of Jesus came to India. In two thousand years how many were converted to Christianity? But when the Portuguese landed at Mumbai, they had a war at Mahim Fort and they won. After the war they went around the place and butchered the civilians to strike the terror among them; the conversions of the locals followed by the missionaries.

The news about the pope appears while I am reading M. N. Roy’s “Historical Role of Islam: An Essay on Islamic Culture”, a dispassionate study published seventy years ago, and Sayyed Hossein Nasr’s book, “Islamic Art and Spirituality”, in the context of writings on Hassan Fathy’s architecture. Both books, so also Hassan Fathy, deserve the attention of Muslims as well as people of other faiths, in India as well as in the rest of the world, particularly in the West. I have neither read the text of the Pope’s talk nor do I have intention to procure its copy. I am only a Native Roman Catholic (native: not to mix-up my identity with European race/s, despite my name and surname) of India, a layperson; I have no say in Church’s affairs or its hierarchies. Spare me, O, Brethren!

¬ ¬ ¬ ¬
Remigius de Souza
ARCHETYPES 69/243 S B MRG MUMBAI 400028 INDIA
07.10.2006