The dignity of a preacher hung in balance. An entire village traumatised by two decades of animosity and heartache.
What possessed these otherwise sensible and generous people to sink to such depths of possessiveness and insanity?
What great riches were they fighting over that brotherly ties were forsaken and decency forgotten?
Two of the richest families in the village pitted against one poor man. That is how it all started.
The dirt road winded up seamlessly past the overarching bridge until it was elbowed out mercilessly by a tiny triangular piece of land jutting out from the corners of a dilapidated hut.
This contentious plot of land was the lone stumbling block to an important road in the village. Two prosperous businessmen (cousins) who owned most of the land through which the pathway was being made were spearheading the road construction. They had obtained government sanction. However, the hut owner alone refused to sell his land to them thus inadvertently becoming a hindrance to the progress of the road.
Was this man being a spoilsport to the greater progress of the village? Should we blame him for not moving with the times and not sacrificing for greater good? Should we pity his poverty and be aghast at the fact that the little he owned should be snatched away? Did he have the right to hold on to his ancestral land which he loved and felt connected to, his only possession in the whole world?
He put forward a counter proposal. He would give up this triangular plot if he were to be compensated by an equal amount of land that lay behind his hut. As fate had it, this land was owned conjointly by the two businessmen. They unanimously opposed this proposal saying that they had already sacrificed enough for the construction of the road. Besides, the controversial land in itself had once been owned by the forefathers of the two businessmen and had been bought at a later date by the hut owner’s grandfather who was a distant cousin of their grandfather. They felt that this entitled them to dispose it off as they pleased. They even thought that they were being overly generous by offering money to buy his land.
Did they not have greater responsibility as they had greater power? Why did they not use their wealth to alleviate the misery of the hut owner? Why did they not remember their common heritage? Is it appropriate to invoke ancient rights? Is it correct to think that if the hut owner had conceded, much strife could have been averted and put the blame solely at his door? Would justice have been served then?
Negotiations and counter arguments went on for a little over a decade and managed to polarise the entire village into two factions. It was then that a new preacher came to the village. As innocent as he was of the situation at hand, the two businessmen took him into confidence and poisoned his mind against the hut owner. They took him through their land and the wonderful progress they had made and their elegant homes and polished youth and contrasted it with the shabby penury of the hut owner and his uncivilised manner and uneducated offspring.
Why did the preacher not keep an open mind? Why was he blind to the suffering of the hut owner? Why did he not advise charity and build ties instead of being partisan in his views?
For the next couple of years the preacher, unmindful of the truth of the situation started giving lengthy sermons with conspicuous hints about the ungratefulness and selfishness of the hut owner. The preacher was a man of God, a person of great integrity and honesty but he erred in the fact that he did not independently check his facts and became an ignorant pawn in the hands of the two businessmen. Thus even though his intentions were pure, he became a cause for mischief. Soon the villagers who had initially looked up to him to solve the impasse grew tired of his incendiary remarks and lost trust in his sense of fair play and justice. His followers dwindled and he was expelled.
Even people with great power will lose respect if they do not act justly.
To this day, the triangular piece of land hinders the road and stands as a grim reminder of the stubbornness of man.
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"No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they're telling the truth." Harry S. Truman.
“History is a myth agreed upon.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
If history has taught us anything, it should have been that the use of violence as a means to protest against injustice never pays. It paints the victim and the aggressor in the same bloody hue that makes them indistinguishable.
Standing at the brink of an endless spiral of violence where human beings are pitted against each other, let us come to our senses. Peaceful resolution of issues is the only way ahead. Forgiveness, basic decency, and tolerance might sound wishy-washy but it is more pragmatic than hate politics, which leaves none the victor in the end.
And Spidey was right, great power does bring in its wake the burden of great responsibility!
