http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/11/27/world/asia/27mumbai.html?s=1&pg=8
My Comment NYT#193. (a version)
November 26, 2008 9:30 pm
India and ALL the sovereign nation-states of South Asia can go forward ONLY if We the People collectively WAGE PEACE & JUSTICE while increasing VIGILANCE and SECURITY, vigorously encouraging our governments to pursue the governance we DESERVE.
I thank every person for their comments that show CONCERN for those who suffered and died and have been injured in these horrific attacks and I send my sympathy to their families and communities who have suffered such a grevious loss.
I deplore all comments on these NYT Comment pages against Muslims and Islam, made in response to the terror attacks inflicted upon the innocent people of Mumbai, allegedly by a group calling themselves the Deccan Mujahadeen. Terrorism has no religion, though religion is used as an excuse.
Economic/ Social/Political Justice is a powerful antidote against terror. A few of the millions who are despairing and marginalized by hunger, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, discrimination can and do become pathological. They violate the rights of countless others with murderous, callous indifference. They can even lead seemingly comfortable middle class lives and still experience marginalization, as in the London bombings. Ethnic Tamil Hindus and ethnic Buddhists have been operating for decades with violence and murder in Sri Lanka.
What role have neo-imperial nation-states (U.S.) and former colonial powers (U.K.) played through invasion, occupation, sanctions, threats, settlement, militaristic intervention, resource consumption, in other formerly colonized, now emerging sovereign nation-states? Retaliatory extra-state terrorism and long-term state-sponsored corporate terrorism appear to be linked.
Mumbai is one amazing resilient global megacity, whether temporarily submerged by a powerful monsoon or by a powerful series of bloody bomb blasts. Mumbaikars are worthy of their/our great city and they are in our meditations and in our collective action.
Gandhi's lived message ("my life is my message") of peace and non-violence in this precise moment of terrorist violence, is especially relevant.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
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