Taming The Mind Of Terror - Part 2

In continuation to my 'Taming The Mind The Terror', allow me to express that I am, in no way, trying to over-simplify the extremely grave issue of Terrorism or make Education look like as one-stop solution to the entire issue.

Terrorism, in my view, is an extremely unpredictable phenomenon and going forward can/will even effect us. And now, it is no more about our neighbour - it is much beyond it as it is both Global & Local.

Even I am aware of a lot of 'educated' people who are supremely radical and also of a lot of 'religious-minded' people who are equally radical & illogical. Trust me 'religion' is not the cause of radicalisation - economic weakness / un-education / non-exposure is and religion then becomes the level. And so my point is more on quality, rather than quantity of Education

Education should be pushed explicitly / talked about, as it is a very strong tool, out of the many available - & I feel this is not happening. And I am sure a lot of us will somewhere agree that we may be educated but not enlightened - purely because we have never been given adequate exposure to other faiths and ideologies, which is getting perceived as a cause of such problems. And we all know that India's education system has a lot of grounds to cover before it becomes efficient :)

Somewhere, we all are victims of ignorance, even if we are educated – there is no concept of comparative religion as a subject / no culture of debating / no action on developing a tolerant attitude. But I firmly believe that education (updated one) can inculcate the mearning of co-existence, which actually may be need of hour :).

Education can be purely demystifying a myth about something in a normal one-to-one conversation to setting a formal syllabus :)

Taming The Mind Of Terror

You can't read the minds of people who have the guts to do such ghastly acts (like the one in Mumbai yesterday - 13/7/2011) - worst is when such acts are carried out in the name of God / religion.

My belief is that the a proven solution to such a phenomenon is actually collective increase in focus and hence spending on 'Education', which somewhere I believe is not given due importance by World Governments - increasing defence budgets & weaponary / voicing condemnation of such acts / improving judiciary / setting up systems may solve the problem but still not be able to touch the root cause which is vulnerability.

And I feel, education, can defnitely make one strong, more rational & hence more balanced - important to make & take sound (even if wrong) decisions. Sorry for coming across passionate but then the more unfortunate part of the vicious circle is the backlash of such acts being borne by a particular community / faith - this further adds to the length of the vicious circle and not fair at all.

I am sure peace will prevail in the long term - it is just that no one can define 'long term', as of now.

Till then... lets continue to be good as we are the change we wish to see in the world :)

Have Faith In Faith - whatever 'faith' you follow :)