Boundaries and Prejudices

Over the past three days here in India, and probably in Britain as well (I reckon from all the news that filters in), there has been a huge hue and cry over the Big Brother Racism Issue. To be honest, I’m neither a big fan of the Channel 4 show nor am I a sucker for juicy celebrity gossip. Still, it is hard to ignore all the latest happenings as they are being beamed from halfway across the globe, especially when the whole world is trying to polarize your opinion on the issue and make you believe that a great injustice, probably as monumental as any other thing seen in world history is taking place.

Now don’t get me wrong when I write the above. I’m not a racist, nor am I a proponent of discrimination in any form. In fact, I strongly believe that any form of discrimination, whether it be based on religion, caste, creed, sex or race is utterly despicable. It is the sort of thing that only a human can do to a fellow human and such incidents make us question whether we are really up and above the rest of the species on this earth.

Einstein once said:

It’s more difficult to root out prejudice than to disintegrate an atom.

And I think that brings us to the root cause of this whole issue and of all the other discriminatory issue plaguing our world at this hour. Too many boundaries exist – in our mind and in our cultural interpretations. That in itself makes us wary of anyone new, anyone who looks or seems somehow different from ourselves, enters our lives and the precincts where we live, work or play.

I dream of a world without boundaries – where the flight of an individual is not constrained by the nation he hails from or the conditions he has been born into. I dream of a world where we can all speak a common language, on a common forum. I dream of a planet unified, with every man and woman a part of the whole.