A wake up call

Hello,

This is my first post on this blog. I am glad Alise has documented so well our activities since the start of our fellowship.

I felt the need to write this blog entry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. It is not primarily about the attacks itself, or my reactions to it, but about how I feel it pertains to what we do here at the University Library. I would like to emphasize that this is just my opinion.

One reason I believed I would be a good candidate for the diversity fellowship is because I come from a country which strives for unity in diversity, tolerance and equal opportunity.
I strive to live up to these ideals. Achieving this, to a great degree, is the Indian dream.

My country overthrew colonial rule through nonviolent aggression. My country became one of the first independent non-Western democracies. My country continues to be home to the largest population in the world under democratic rule.

This country I talk about, my country, is not just India. It is also Pakistan.
It is also Bangladesh, and most definitely Kashmir too.

The people who bear these labels now were all the same people once. ALL these people, united, launched an unprecedented movement to claim an improbable victory. I am free today because of them.

Now, this incident in Mumbai has happened. It follows several other incidents before it. The list of jolts to end the Indian dream is endless. But I believe that these wake up calls can be prevented.

The Indian ideal is America's ideal too. In fact, it is more correctly a human ideal. In the global society we live in, diversity is mostly welcomed with open arms. We like meeting people different from us, with different values and different experiences.

I can't imagine how boring it would be to live in a world with only clones of me. But I do occasionally harbor biases, it is part of being human. Whenever I combat my own prejudices, I think of someone I know who did not evoke in me a negative attitude, and I use the memory of this person as a weapon to fight.

A library is a perfect nurturing environment for diversity. Knowledge is necessary for awareness. Awareness contributes to personal maturity. Maturity fosters the spirit of inclusion and tolerance.

I sometimes feel the efforts we make to promote diversity seem trivial against real world problems. But I like to think that when a student glances at a picture of a democratic activist in Iran, perhaps while paying for a cup of coffee, it adds one more face to keep in mind, to be recalled when Iran's infamous President appears on the news.

I wonder what was going through the minds of those boys as they made their three-day journey from Karachi to Mumbai. I wonder if they ever had a chance to meet any good Indians, Americans, Britons or Jews. I wonder which unfortunate encounter with a bad person made them wake up from the human dream.


Sindhu.