A talk given by H H
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar during the Curtain raiser event of Volunteer for a Better India.
As I was lighting the lamp, it took a little time. I said,'It takes a little time for the oil lamp to catch fire, but once it catches fire, it burns.'
The same goes with the people of this country. They are a little slow in the beginning, but once they begin, they don’t stop.
You know corruption begins where the sense of belongingness ends.
Nobody is corrupt within the purview of their friends and families, or with people whom they feel belong to them.
When the sense of belongingness ends, from that boundar
y, corruption begins.
In The
Art of Living, that is what all of the volunteers, teachers and others are trying to do, i.e., expand the sense of belongingness -The whole world belongs to us.
Every community, every faith, people of all age groups, rural or urban - they are all part of us and they all belong to us.
The sense of the entire humanity being one family, of belonging to each other, is essential for us to have an ethical and just society.
Though it may sound like utopia, but we should never leave this dream. We should dream about it and move in that direction.
Even a tiny step in this right direction will take us a long way, and we have seen this happening.
Society, when it is ridden with crime and corruption, does not become safe for anyone to live in. And we don’t want India to turn into such a field of fear and unjust practices, where people don’t feel safe. This is not India. Here people would always be fearless. Every religion, every culture, every language enjoyed patronage in this land. But today we see a different picture where people have to move with different types of fear. Crime against women and crime against children are on the rise.
So we need to take this step now, to bring people together and make them feel safe and secure.
Yesterday I was addressing about 756 offenders. They are called goondas, dacoits or rowdy-sheeters.
We gave them a different name yesterday - Karnadhars, which means torch-bearer for a new light, a new hope in society.
When we heard from them how their lives changed in just a week’s time (after attending
The Art of Living YLTP Program), our hopes have really touched the sky.
These people who do petty to big crimes in slums, if their minds and hearts can be changed, then we have a lot of hope. And not only hope, but this puts a lot of responsibility on us.
When we know that we can do something, we have to do it. We can’t just keep quiet.
Volunteer For
A Better India is a beautiful initiative. I am sure each one of you here will multiply yourself into groups of thousands of volunteers, to bring the message of a crime-free, corruption-free and just India.
What do you say?! (All in the audience say, 'Yes').
On 1 March 2009, I remember it was you volunteers and Yes+ students who first started India Against Terrorism, because in the year 2008 India saw 13 terror attacks in 12 months, and hundreds of people had lost their lives in these attacks.
