“If you hold dear the memory of Swami Shraddhanandji, you would help in purging the atmosphere of mutual hatred and calumny, you would help in boycotting papers which foment hatred and spread misrepresentation. I am sure that India would lose nothing if 90 per cent of the papers were to cease today. Now you will, perhaps, understand why I have called Abdul Rashid a brother, and I repeat it, I do not even regard him as guilty of Swamiji's murder. Guilty, indeed, are all those who excited feelings of hatred against one another. For us Hindus, the Gita enjoins on us the lesson of equality; we are to cherish the same feelings towards a learned Brahmin as towards a Chandala, a dog, a cow or an elephant.”
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About this quote
The hand that commits harm is rarely the only guilty party; those who spent months stoking rage and spreading distortion helped load the weapon. Naming that wider blame, and refusing to place even the offender beyond human regard, is how a cycle of revenge gets interrupted instead of fed.
When to use it
- After a brawl, people look past the two who threw punches to the voices that spent weeks whipping up the crowd.
- A parent who forgives a child's outburst also examines the tension at home that primed it.
- A community that stops sharing a gossip channel starves the rumor mill pushing colleagues into feuds.