Man...

Man:

The very first book of the Bible in its very first chapter declares that ‘…God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him…’ 27. In Hamlet, Shakespeare wonders, ‘What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and  admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!’

It is this man who is hungry, has no roof over his head, let alone anything else. This man was represented by the very Son of man, Jesus when he was hungry (Mk 11:12) and had nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20). Consolingly he identified himself with the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner etc in Mt 25:34ff.

The toll of starvation today is equivalent to a Hiroshima every three days! V. R. (Krishna Iyer) ‘…twenty eight people, most of them young children, are dying this very minute – twenty eight people no different from you or me or our children, except that we had food and they do not.’ (Morilyn Ferguson: The Aquarian Conspiracy, pp 455-56) Let us listen to Gandhi wailing of his own countrymen: ‘The poor sisters of Orissa have no saris; they are in rags yet they have not lost all sense of decency; but I assure you, we have lost. We are naked in spite of our clothing and they are clothed in spite of their nakedness.’ (M. K. Gandhi: Socialism of My Conception, pp 108-9) In basic human capabilities, India ranks 134; in adult literacy almost half the population remain unlettered; the percentage of underweight children are 63 and pregnant women with anaemia aged 15-49 are at 88%. How will one justify this deprivation against the dignity of man which is akin to that of God himself?

In this background let us listen to Vivekananda: ‘We talk foolishly against material civilization… Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven. Pooh! ...more bread, more opportunity for everybody…’  Now listen to Gandhi again: ‘…the economic constitution of India, and for the matter of that of the world, should be such that no one under it should suffer from want of food and clothing. In other words, everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to make the two ends meet…’ (Young India, 15^th November 1928)

How this situation of want/deprivation compromises with the picture of man drawn in the Bible and in other literatures? On the contrary it challenges it which is an affront to human dignity and worth.

‘…Before they would work for change they have to believe that change is possible, that a culture fixated on individual profit-seeking alone is not ‘natural’. The tragedy is that we have had to reach the point where so many people are hungry and malnourished… before we could begin to see that our system- a system built on the vulnerabilities of the human personality instead of its strengths- can never create a human society.

…we must not allow our appropriate sense of urgency to lead to frustration and despair. It took centuries to create the structures that cause the worldwide deprivation we now witness. It will take time to construct a human world. That does not belittle our task; that makes it all the more important. Our personal time frames have changed. We must come to understand today’s struggle in light of the entire scope of human history. We must not limit our vision by what we see around us today. What we see today may tell us little about what our children and their children are capable of creating.’ (Food First, p. 503)

 Let us conclude this reflection by quoting Gandhi again: ‘There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not to anyone’s greed.’

[Indebted to Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, “…..’