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Human Rights And Jainism technology and make them truly blissful and create a global society free from hunger and hatred – a society at peace with itself and with its environment. Thus, a heaven will descend on this earth. What more does a human being want ?
The poetic composition of the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, which basically is in praise of our motherland, is symbolic of the sacred sentiments towards humanity as a whole and it eulogises human rights in all their aspects. It is only when such rights are granted to each citizen that humanity can be free from fear, agony, exploitation and repression. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore :
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that Heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”
Let us hope that the new millenium will usher in an era of peace, equality and justice for all those who inhabit this planet which cries out for the restoration of its pristine purity when it came into being aeons ago.
[Lecture delivered at Parliament of the World's Religion,
Cape Town, South Africa on 2nd Dec. 1999)
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