09 February 2014 - QA 4

What is your message to the leadership of the world, and especially to the leadership of the Middle east to get people to live in harmony and peace? What is your vision for the Kurdish nation which is divided into four countries to live in peace and harmony?
(Dr. Akrawi: An active member of the Women Union working with UNICEF from Kurdistan)

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

You know, the problem there is enormous. It is centuries old; not one century but many centuries old. There is not one solution. I think we will all have to collectively put our thoughts and our mind and see, whatever works wherever, we should apply that.

Basically, I would say, keep connecting people. If all of us here start connecting with more people, and wherever you find there is a spark of misunderstanding or there is some tension coming up, if we can do something to cool down the tension, then we would be contributing quite a bit.

I remember, a few ladies from Israel and Palestine came to our German ashram once. In the beginning they would not sit with each other, they would not look at each other. But just a few days of sitting together, playing some games and singing, brought them together and they became very good friends.

I will give you another example. I am narrating this story which happened in 2007. We had 50 youth who had come here from Baghdad, Iraq and 150 youth from the rest of the Arab countries – Lebanon, etc. It was not planned, but it so happened that at the same time there were 22 people from Israel as well.
The first day there were big fireworks because the Iraqis felt cheated, saying that if they had known there were Israelis they would have never come at that time. Yet they couldn’t take the next flight and go, obviously.
It so happened that by the time they left on the seventh day, there were tears in everyone’s eyes. So, there’s an artificial fear psychosis which has been created, unfortunately, by either the political setup, or vested interests which need to be broken down. We need to bring this message, 'Hey, come on, wake up! We are all human beings! Let’s shake hands, let’s do something together'. That would make a difference.