Gerald D'Cunha

At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.” -        Italian Proverb H ow do the thoughts of discrimination creep into our hearts? I mean – all sorts of discrimination… be it based on our religions, castes, class, colour, language, customs, eating and dressing habits, country, gender, abilities, localities we live in and so on… Funny and stupid it looks to me! I am a Christian. A Catholic. A ‘Roman Catholic’ to be precise! I, sometimes, wonder: What difference does it make to me as a human being? Roman or Syrian… Catholic or Protestant… Christian or a non-Christian… Yes, which one of these makes me a finer human being? Funny and stupid, indeed! Whatever religion I have embraced, I have embraced it from my birth. In fact, I did not become a Christian with my eyes open… My parents baptized me as one when my eyes were closed. So, it is my religion that has embraced me and...

I f the blot called ‘discrimination’ should go from our society, it should first go from our own hearts. If we still do not like to shake hands with those who come to pick thrash from our doorsteps, if we have a ‘separate’ cup, glass and plate for those who come to clean our floors or cook our food, if we still assume that we are from an ‘upper caste’ or ‘upper class’… then, there must be a separate God for those who we think are ‘lower’ than us and for us – yes, the ‘upper’ ones… Even though we are, so often, so brutally discriminated in the hands of people who think ‘upper’ and ‘higher’ than us, the blot still persists in us… We still discriminate.  Yes, on the basis of such silly things… The race. The caste. The colour. The class. The gender. The abilities. The education. The locality. The language. The age. And a dozen other silly things. L ast evening, my wife and I watched the latest Hindi movie – ‘Article 15’. And, yes, we came back home shaken ...

P ablo Picasso, once, said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”  And, that explains why the end of the innocence in human soul, is the end of human soul itself. Children are pure and unpolluted. In our frantic attempts to make them ‘grow up’, what we actually end up doing is - make them ‘give up’ their innocence… their purity, their curiosity and sense of wonder. We also end up doing one more thing… a vicious thing, indeed: We pour poison into their hearts… Yes, the poison of ‘discrimination’ and ‘bias’! Caste, class, colour, gender, nationality and religion… every kind of discrimination or bias is alien to a child. It creeps in as it ‘grows up’. In other words, it wasn’t there in us while we were little children. We picked it from outside, only to be polluted and poisoned! The ability to see the goodness in others and live with them harmoniously is a fine education. In fact, as Picasso said, it take...