MUMBAI
A peace proposal symposium held at the Nehru Centre, Worli, on Saturday evening saw an engaging discussion on how the inherent dignity of life can be upheld with the qualities of compassion, wisdom and courage.
Titled ‘Compassion, Wisdom and Courage: Building a Global Society of Peace and Creative Coexistence’ the symposium had several eminent speakers – Kishore Mandhyan, formerly of the UN, Sheela Patel of SPARC, Matthew Spacie of Magic Bus and S Parasuraman of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Sheela Patel, who has been working for the rights of the poor, said that when she initially started off working for society’s underprivileged, she was baffled by the magnitude of their problems. It was only when she accepted the completely new paradigm of viewing the problems of the dispossessed and the marginalised from their own perspectives that she was able to gain an understanding of their motivations and behaviours.
Varsha Das of the Bharat Soka Gakkai in her closing remarks emphasised that it is the responsibility of the individuals at the grassroots to take up the task to ‘act locally and think globally’.