Respected Chair, Esteemed Panelists, Dignitaries, and Representatives of World Religions,
It is indeed an honour to be here once again and speak to you all as a representative of Zoroastrianism at the Community of Sant’ Egidio.
At the onset I would like to acknowledge that in this paper of mine, I have added a few remarks of my dear friend, colleague and mentor Dr Homi Dhalla who has been a part of the Community of Sant’Egidio’s legacy meetings since the historic gathering of Assisi in 1986. Homi who has many friends and well-wishers here at the Community could not be here with us today, and hence I am happy to also incorporate few of his ideas as part of my presentation for this very important forum on ‘Living Together’.
When I attended my first meeting of the Community in Rome in 2022, the world was despaired by the plight of Mahsa Amini, who succumbed to her injuries after being brutalised by the moral police in Iran, and the innocent lives being lost as a result of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Less than a month after our meeting in Berlin last year, we witnessed unfolding of tragic events in Palestine and Israel, and which continues to uproot lives and families as we meet here today. In the United Kingdom where I currently live, in the summer of 2024, as you may be aware, an estimated 29 anti-immigration demonstrations and riots took place across 27 towns and cities. Many of these were violent, with participants attacking places of worship and hotels housing asylum seekers. This was the most significant disorder in the UK in more than a decade. And as we all may recognise these are not isolated tragedies that we are witnessing. There are events unfolding in different corners of the world as we speak, which, may not receive enough attention from the global community due to various reasons. But these events defy and continues to undermine the very idea of ‘Living Together’.
In my academic field, I conduct ethnographic research and I always use autoethnography as a method to understand the developments in my surroundings. Therefore, when I received the invitation to participate in this forum, the first question that came to my mind was how did I come to perceive the idea of ‘Living Together’ and how did I inculcate it in my life. While, there were multiple instances that occurred to me, there were two that had a lasting impression on me.
The first one was when I was barely eight years old when my hometown was engulfed in communal violence and my family who are common civilians and part of the growing middle class segment of the society gave refuge to a young individual who was in their early 20s and saved the person’s life from a mob who was looking out for them. I was told by my elders ‘not to tell anyone about the person staying with us, otherwise they will kill my father’. The fear was such that we do not discuss it with anyone and in fact this is the first time I am speaking about it in a public forum.
As Zoroastrians in India, we are privileged not to have any communal tensions with members of other communities, and therefore my family could have just carried on with their lives and not risk our wellbeing. But they chose to help and protect a young life by giving him refuge in the tense days of the riots because I guess they believed in the idea of ‘Living Together’. As I grew up, I got to know about multiple such instances in the city during the violence where families took the privilege of their neutral positionality to protect lives.
The second experience that became a defining factor in my life was when at the age of 16, I was given a scholarship to go on a Cultural Exchange program to Italy by AFS-Intercultura, a non-profit organisation conducting exchange programmes between countries since the cessation of the second world war. I did not have a choice to choose a family I would be spending one year with. I did not even know how to correctly pronounce ‘Ciao’, leave alone the knowledge of the Italian language.
My parents would not have been able to afford to send me for such an experience abroad which is even today considered a privilege in the country I was born in. But thanks to Intercultura and the scholarship, I, an only child of my biological parents found my way to Italy and was hosted by a family which had eight siblings, parents, nonna, a dog and two cats! I shared a room with my Italian brother, Tommaso, who was a year younger to me and he always found it annoying when I would do my Zoroastrian prayers. We had more differences than similarities and often times came close to giving blows to each other and our elder brother had to intervene. On the last day of my exchange at the Milano Centrale Train station when I had taken the seat inside the train carriage and my Italian family stood outside the window waiving at me, Tommaso and I, both had tears in our eyes! Today, fourteen years after the exchange program, among the eight siblings I have in Italy, Tommaso is the closest to me!
Being the only child, my parents could have refused me the permission to go thousands of miles away for one full year to be with a family they did not know anything about. But they allowed me to have an experience that changed the course of my life forever! Somewhere, it was possible because almost 80 years back Stephan Gallati, the founder of AFS Intercultural Programs had the vision and courage to ‘Imagine Peace’ in the postwar period when he chose to establish the AFS Scholarships!
What I have understood is that ‘Living Together’ needs ‘COURAGE’ and ‘COLLECTIVE ACTION’. In Zoroastrianism, the faith I represent, there is a concept of Hamāzōr’. Hamāzōr bēm which is a Zoroastrian-Persian expression of greeting implying ‘Be we one in strength’. To the Zoroastrian, the forces of good and evil are continuously at war with each other. A Zoroastrian is urged to battle evil by aligning oneself with good. But a Zoroastrian is not expected to accomplish this in isolation. An individual’s natural instinct to live and participate in society has been recognised in Zoroastrianism which expects an individual to achieve these ideals working alongside fellow human beings. It is in this context that the concept of HAMAZOR becomes pertinent in the Zoroastrian tradition. In its wider context the term HAMAZOR means unity, harmony or fellowship. What is important to note is that the concept of HAMAZOR is not limited only to unity and togetherness with fellow humans but we are expected to live in harmony with our natural surroundings.
A Zoroastrian is expected to make a conscious effort to end discords. In the Zoroastrian Confession of Faith prayers, wherein the four fundamental principles of Zoroastrianism are enumerated, the very first is to put an end to all discord. Moreover, humankind is expected to fulfill three important duties: to make an enemy a friend, to make a wicked person righteous and to make an ignorant person wise. It is imperative that human beings should not merely seek to end disagreement but should live in harmony with others.
One of the Zoroastrian texts, the Vendidad has a passage which is a conversation between Prophet Zarathustra and the Creator Ahura Mazda, where Zarathustra asks Ahura Mazda,
‘O Maker of the material world, the Holy one! Which is the third place where the Earth feels most happy? Ahura Mazda replies, “It is the place where one of the faithful sows most corn, grass, and fruit, O Spitama Zarathushtra! (It is) where he waters ground that is dry, or drains ground that is too wet”.
The passage has an injunction to make unproductive lands fertile.
Conclusion
While I would not want to generalise, what has been disheartening for me is that even as I worked for organisations encouraging intercultural learning and continue to interact with teachers, policy makers and religious representatives who participate in interreligious dialogues, I have continued to observe a recurring pattern of xenophobic tendencies among the very people who are equipped to abolish it. One may wonder that why after these many years of progress in the field of communication and globalisation, we are witnessing the rise in hate related incidences. I have come to realise that the biggest threat that we as a society face today in the digital age is infinite paddling of fake news! Whether it is India, whether it is the UK, or whether it is Italy, the three countries I call home, fake news has become the biggest culprit which will hinder our path to ‘Living Together, and Imagining Peace’. While, the governments have been busy tackling the flow of fake news and stopping it at the source, very little attention is being given to educating people to identify fake news.
My argument is for systematic inclusion in the primary and high school level academic curriculum of digital literacy, primarily focusing on ‘identification of fake news’ and more funding to encourage ‘intercultural exchanges’ among young students! No matter how many documents we sign, and how many meetings we organise, and how many forums we participate in, if we do not catch them young, we will lose them forever!
To conclude with, I would like to quote the lyrics from the song ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon,
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You may say I am a dreamer
But I am not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one!
Thank you!