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means that if you are an Englishman and if your country is at war with Germany, as ithappened in the last World War, your city is the victim of an air-raid, and one finemorning you get out of bed and find your father, mother, brother, sister killed in aninstant, your house burnt down, your friends wailing and destruction as far as the eye cansee. Innocent people, but destroyed because they called themselves ‘English’. It couldhappen the other way too. A German family may be blown to bits. This is the meaning ofwar: senseless, ruthless killing with no gain whatsoever. What is worse is, mankind ispiling armaments, more and more sophisticated armaments. You may have heard ofthem: cruise missiles, F-16’s, MIG’s, atom bombs, submarines, nuclear weapons, and soon, newer and crueler forms of killing each other. Millions are wounded and maimed forlife. Cities and civilisations have been wiped out, for man has fought wars from timeimmemorial. The difference is that if a nuclear war were to break out now the planetcannot survive, for nuclear weapons have the power to destroy not only human lives, butplants, animals, trees, birds, the whole of life on earth.Think of the divisions that exist even today between nation and nation all over theglobe; think of how peoples are divided by the colour of their skin, the blacks and thewhites and so on and the sufferings of the peoples of South Africa. Or nearer home, thinkof the suspicion and the gulf that exists between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.Likewise, religious divisions have caused war both historically and even today,between the Hindus and the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews. A religion is supposedto help a person understand his place in the universe, his relationship with God and man.It is supposed to help him transcend the earthly bondages he acquires through life.Instead, these labels seem to create anger, frustration, dominance, violence and hatred.Isn’t that the greatest sorrow of man?Experts say that world governments spend about one thousand billion dollars onarmaments per year and if all wars stopped, there would be enough money to feed, clotheand house all the peoples of the world. Think of another kind of division that exists nowbetween the richer countries and the poorer countries, where poverty kills the humanspirit, or of the division between the rich and the poor in the same country. Isn’t thattragic?Look at our own country, India. What are the divisions within the country? Do yousay, “I am a Maharashtrian”, “I am a Bengali”, “I am a Tamilian”, “I am a Punjabi”, etc.,or do you say “I am an Indian”, and further more, can you say “I am a human being”?What do grown-ups in this country say and do now? Aren’t they all divided in theirminds and hearts and therefore in their behaviour? One state against another; onelanguage against another; one community against another; one caste against another; onesub-caste against another. What is happening to us? Isn’t it a very sad thing that inspite ofall the culture and the glory of the past that we are so proud of and speak of so often, weshould be such a divided nation? Could we go to the root cause of division itself, that is.to the mind of man, in order to take a different turn altogether?Can we help our minds see that all divisions are mischievous? After all, underneaththe skin, as it were, human beings arc all alike. We all suffer, we all rejoice. We getangry, we get jealous. We are ambitious. We are kind. We are gentle. We have feelings,we have hurts. We discover, we invent. Aren’t human beings really and truly alike eventhough they may look different? Some are white, some black, some brown, some yellow;