Shortly after the hijacked planes were crashed into New York's World Trade Centre on September 9, 2001, the Ramakrishna Mission printed a startling poster.
For us, said the Mission, every 9/11 is a day for celebrating peace and brotherhood. It is the date on which Swami Vivekananda delivered his famous “Sisters and Brothers of America” speech at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.
At about the same time, Gandhian scholars recalled that an entire chapter in Louis Fischer's famous biography of Mahatma Gandhi is titled September 11, 1906. It was on that day that Gandhi first spoke about Satyagraha — at a public meeting in Johannesburg.
So far the poetic irony of these diverse historic events on the same date only seemed to interest peace activists or numerologists.
Way forward
But reflecting on this odd combination of events may now be a creative way of untangling the web of complications triggered by the plans for what has, wrongly, been called the Ground Zero mosque.
In fact, the proposed Muslim community centre is to be located at 51 Park Place or Park51. This address is two blocks away from Ground Zero.
On the evening of September 10 this year, a couple of thousand people who support the proposed Muslim community centre gathered for a candle light vigil at Park51.
This action was a response to the increasingly bitter polarization between American conservatives and liberals on two key issues. What is the most appropriate way to process and resolve the hurt of 9/11 2001? And to what extent are American citizens willing and able to uniformly defend the freedom of religion?
In this context it becomes imperative to emphasise that the human missiles of 2001 don't actually have a unique claim on 9/11 — even in the history of New York city.
It was on September 11, 1609 that Henry Hudson became the first European to set foot on an island which natives called ‘Menatay' — present day Manhattan. Hudson's landing, somewhere in the vicinity of today's Ground Zero, was a precursor to European settlements and mass death of native populations.
A long range view of these various 9/11s illuminates diverse ways of grappling with the tussle between co-existence and conflict, faith and reason, cooperation and conquest.
Let us begin with the most distant 9/11, Hudson's landing, which was celebrated last year as the 400th birthday of New York city.
New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement established in the wake of Hudson's first contact, is remembered as a multi-cultural, liberal enterprise based on respect for diversity and tolerance.
This narrative track can be trashed for glossing over the fact that the 17th century settlement had only a brief period of bonhomie with native tribes. By 1625 the Dutch began construction of Fort Amsterdam — as a defence against angry natives as well as British and French competitors. Within half a century of Hudson's landing, much of the native population had been wiped out by European guns and germs, those who survived retreated inland.
Can this history become a justification for imputing unredeemable guilt, across centuries, to an entire race? In that case all European descent Americans would be cast in the role of murderous interlopers.
Certainly this is a dead-end track — both morally untenable and anti-life. But opposition to a mosque at Park51 is not about making Muslims across the world carry a permanent, collective, guilt for 9/11 2001. It's about the lingering emotional ravages of a particular event and how they imbue a particular place with meaning.
Opposing a mosque at Park51 because it is too close to the tragic, humiliation recalling, Ground Zero raises an awkward question. What is the radius of Ground Zero's sanctity zone? And is there an irreconcilable conflict between faith and reason underlying this question?
Relevance today
This is what makes the 9/11 of 1893 fascinatingly pertinent to contemporary conundrums. The World Parliament of Religions was a uniquely American endeavor — grounded in a celebration of reason as a basis for multi-faith dialog and confidence in the dawn of an American Century.
Swami Vivekananda's speech on that day began with the simple words, “Sisters and Brothers of America” and proceeded to declare that sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism are outdated phenomena. But the relevance of the Swami's 9/11 does not depend on such rudimentary political correctness.
Born into an affluent lawyer's family in Calcutta, Vivekananda grew up amid an emerging Indian middle class that was simultaneously fascinated by the West and resentful of the indignities of colonial rule. As a disciple of the mystical seer Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda processed and resolved these conflicting emotions.
He travelled to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, at the age of 30, not so much as a Hindu missionary, but the bearer of what he experienced as a universal non-sectarian truth.
Vivekananda realised that all spiritual striving is beyond reason, but reason is the only way to get there. For, reason is the greatest gift of the human existence.
Even institutionalised religions, Vivekananda told the Parliament at Chicago, are nothing but “different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight” to the same goal.
Common goal
That goal is God-realisation or self-realisation — the two being one and the same thing.
Over the next decade, till he died at the age of 39, Vivekananda travelled across the US and Western Europe, engaged in dialogues about racial and religious conflict. He left behind a body of work that attempts to recalibrate the dynamic between conquest, reparation and reconciliation.
However, it was Gandhi who forged a political tool by tapping into similar insights. Born into a merchant family, Gandhi trained as a barrister in London and later set up a practice in South Africa. By the time he first articulated the concept of Satyagraha, at the packed Imperial Theatre in Johannesburg on 9/11 1906, Gandhi had been campaigning against racism for almost a decade.
Indians of all faiths, castes and professions had gathered on that 9/11 to protest several discriminatory laws. In an atmosphere charged with anger and the will to fight, Gandhi dropped an idea that acted like a depth charge. Let us fight discriminatory laws by refusing to comply — by offering unflinching non-violent resistance.
His logic was impeccable. Truth is God and God is love. It follows that a struggle for justice cannot involve hurting one's opponent. Instead, the ‘other' in a conflict must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. In turn, this means cultivating the willingness to examine ‘truth' in all its many dimensions. This can only be done by being strong — not physical strength but the strength of truth-force or love-force.
“Acts of violence create bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers,” wrote Gandhi's biographer, the American journalist, Louis Fischer. “Satyagraha aims to exalt both sides.”
At first glance this may seem like an impossibly lofty vantage point from which to view the angst over a mosque near Ground Zero.
But attitude, not altitude, is critical here.
For instance, it is interesting to shift the focus, momentarily, to the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House built on the site where Fort Amsterdam once stood. This grand, artistically carved, stone building at 1 Bowling Street is also a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Completed in 1907, it now houses the New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian.
Different attitudes
Depending on which attitude comes naturally to you, the exhibits within can be seen in sharply contradictory ways. If you believe that past hurts must be nursed indefinitely then the museum can be condemned as white man's hypocrisy. Others may experience the same exhibits as an acknowledgement of past wrongs, of honouring of the defeated and even a subtle attempt at reparation.
Of course the immediacy of the WTC 9/11 hurt is so overpowering that it would be offensive to imply that there can be any parallel with damages triggered by Hudson's 9/11.
What is common, and unchanging, is the challenge of seeking a universal basis for fairness — as well as the striving to anchor emotions and faith in reason.
Chicago's World Parliament of Religions was an ambitious, vastly successful, project of Americans who wished to celebrate diversity and co-existence. It was dismissed as an absurdity by some Christian leaders who argued that since Christianity is the only real faith there is no basis for such a gathering.
‘New York Neighbors for American Values', the coalition of civic groups which organised the candle lit vigil at Park51 on September 10, is standing up for ‘equality, diversity and religious freedom'. The Muslim community centre, which they support, is being built to uphold “respect for the diversity of expression and ideas between all people.”
On 9/11 itself a group called “Stop Islamisation of America” organised a Remembrance Rally which reportedly attracted larger numbers. Their rallying call: “Yes to Freedom, No to Ground Zero Mosque”.
This might easily seem like a standard conservative vs. liberal stand-off. And yet, the presence of those who lost loved ones in the WTC attack, among supporters of the Park51 project, implies a ‘ satyagrahi' striving.
Some of the same people have joined the Washington D.C. based Peace Alliance and are lobbying for a Congressional act that would create a Department of Peace.
Sceptics might well point out that since the insights of Vivekananda and Gandhi have frequently not prevailed in their own homeland, what hope is there for their legacies to help the world. Indeed, New York's mosque controversy does revive painful memories of the many lives lost due to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in India.
Again, attitude is the key element. We can be swept away by the competing political agendas which are focused on the here and now — as is the case for some Americans in this election year.
Or we could take a long range view, in which case each of these 9/11s illuminates a crossroad. Together these various events compel us to ponder if civilisation is indeed captive to historical events. Gandhi was utterly confident that the greatest assertion of liberty is to cultivate command over one's own emotions. This alone frees us from being captive both to past hurts and guilt.
Rajni Bakshi'sBazaars, Conversations, Freedomswon theVodafone Crossword Book Award for non-fiction recently.
