The title of this piece is too radical for me; I never thought I would ever write this. But some of your comments on my previous post (Why I like Lal Krishna Advani) made me write this. Now please try to understand this.
I strongly believe in one philosophy, which incidentally was said by Gandhi Ji:
Hate the crime; not the criminal.
I hope we understand the difference between the crime and the criminal. But what restricts us from practicing that? Failing to follow this philosophy made some of us to comment harsh on Karan Thapar, and some to criticize Mr. Advani. My concern is that unless we follow this philosophy, we create a mental block which restricts us from seeing what pearl lies inside the hard shell, how bright is the sunshine inside the harsh sun rays, how cold is the breeze in midst of the bad weather, how good is the rose among the thorn, in short – how beautiful life is in midst of our ugly daily experiences! Following this philosophy made me wish Sonia Gandhi gets well soon when I heard her illness, the same made me empathize with Pakistanis when Bhutto died, the same makes me feel sorry equally for Saddam and Bush. In a nutshell: it is up to you whether you want to learn something good from all or not. You may not like Advani for whatever reason, but you should genuinely appreciate the humility that he portrayed.
I am proud to say that I learnt at least these five things from Karan Thapar’s experiences with Mr. Advani:
o Never to evade a direct question
o To answer frankly and to the point
o Never fail to make up
o If necessary, never hesitate to apologise.
o In essence, have the bigness of heart and humility to apologise.
Am I making sense? Shouldn’t we learn to see crime and the criminal as separate things? That is why I don’t hate Nathu Ram Godse, though I hate what he did – to murder an unarmed old man.