Since the dawn of mankind, humans have witnessed blood being shed in the name of religion, race, linguistics, etc.
Today, discrimination-based war has taken the most devastating form through religion. We can witness this in Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, etc. But the story actually begins thousands of years ago when we were fighting for cows, goats, sheep and land.
We didn’t stop there. We started discriminating between girls and boys. Countless women died due to female foeticide, social prejudice, for the sake of their ‘honour’.
The list goes on. There were fights among religions (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jews). If this was not enough, we started discriminating on the basis of caste, based and even on political lines (communism/capitalism). We started hating other countries – those we considered to be our enemies.
The way out is simple: I like Chinese food but my friend doesn’t. I like Bollywood but my friend doesn’t. But we respect each other’s opinions, we don’t fight over it. We must learn to respect other people’s opinions no matter how different it is from ours.
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela