The word ‘kill’ has been used in so many situations that it has now become a word of first choice in many circumstances. So when we see a snake our first reaction is to kill the snake. When we want to stop the loud music we give instructions to kill the music. We are told to kill our bad habits and when we are waiting for some occurrence, we say we are killing time. The sequences are, we think it, then we say it and then we do it. We have developed the habit of using the word ‘kill’ so much so that it is now in our psyche; it dominates our vocabulary.
Non-vegetarian foods are the product of killing. So for celebrations of people’s birthdays and marriages, the householders kill the animals and other householders encourage killing by purchasing it from shops. On a weekly basis thousands of animals are killed. Meat eating is the one greatest contributor to the act of killing taking place in our country and the world over.
When life becomes so cheap to humans that we value only our own, then belief in God is non-existent and religion has failed to serve its purpose of universal love and respect. Think about Pashupati-Shivaji.
God created life and it is humans who have decided that it is only our lives that are of any value; but now even that initial adoption of this notion has been drastically altered. We have started killing each other indiscriminately and so there are suicide bombers, child soldiers, tribal wars and religious wars based on which God one worships. So now killings are accepted and justified as acts of self-preservation and birthright.
A lurid call for hangings has been suggested as a deterrent to the spate of killings. This is nothing different from the present status quo in thinking. Once again the habit of thinking and speaking about killing has pervaded our psyche. How can killing more stop the mayhem of killing?
Methods of killing and reasons for killing must be analyzed. The protective forces and the legislature and society must accept full responsibility for the directions of our problems of violence and killing of life. Killing is everybody’s problem!
The following are some ideas, which need to be implemented. Let us review the kind of language we speak in terms of words used. We have to reduce the number of animals being killed daily. We have to institute strategies to remove violence in thoughts, words and deeds from our daily lives. I quote from the book, “Sixteen Stories And Thirteen Poems”:
“To kill regardless, becomes a habit!
Chicken, cow or pig. What’s the limit?
It’s the end of the week. Mayhem!
Friday escaped from them,
Meat is meat!
Man, goat or sheep!”
Ram forbid, if in the future there would be meat shops with human parts hanging for sale, just as we see today chicken, goat and other animal parts packaged for sale.
Killing time must cease now, today!
By Pt. Gyandeo Persad, Dharma Mandal
