HATRED
The word ‘hatred’ means ‘violent dislike’, and it is the antonym of the word ‘love’. These two words ‘hate’ and ‘love’ play a very important role in making our lives (even the whole world) go either smoothly or unevenly. If we say that we neither love nor hate, we are perjuring ourselves. Nobody is free from hate and love, even the animals are not exceptions. We are not gods; nor should we try to become gods. Hence, we human beings can’t escape emotions, be it evil ones or virtuous ones. In the ‘Kamayani’, the great poet Jai Shankar Prasad said: “We are superior to gods in the sense that we are always on the war-path in order to make ourselves complete in every field of life. Our life is full of ambitions and struggles and it is always good for human beings. The gods who consider themselves complete have no struggles, and if they have any struggle, it is the struggle to retain their superiority and nothing else.”
In the classics and histories, we find how hatred had brought havoc in the life of many personalities. In the ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton, the Satan does not like the creation of paradise for God. The Satan allures Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. They eat the fruit and the paradise is lost. In the ‘Ramayan’ by Valmiki, Manthara from the very beginning hated Ram, and on learning that Ram is going to be coronated as the king of Ayodhya, she is filled with hatred, and to satisfy her hatred, she poisons the ear of Queen Kaikeyi, who gets the throne of Ayodhya for her own son, Bharat, and gets Ram exiled for fourteen years. The result is the death of King Dasharath and the never-ending repentance and penance of Kaikeyi. In the Mahabharat by Maharishi Ved Vyasa, the Kauravas hated the Pandavas and vice versa, and the result was The Great War that destroyed many families.
Who is not acquainted with the cruelty and callousness of Adolf Hitlor? Hitlor hated the Jews as he had developed a notion (even if he was in the wrong) that “the Jew is the Great Master of Lies. Falsehood and duplicity are the weapons with which he (the Jew) fights. He whom they (the Jews) decry most is nearest to our heart and he whom they mortally hate is our best friend.” (excerpt from Mein Kamph). The result of this violent feeling is not hidden from anyone. More than six million Jews were killed by the Nazis in World War II. Many were put into crematoriums in heaps and burnt like logs of wood. Many such instances are there that make us realize how hatred has destroyed families after families.
Demons hate gods and vice versa. The poor hate the rich and the rich hate the poor. Some boys and girls hate being nagged. Some people are not satisfied with what they have and what they do for their livelihood, and so hate their own jobs. Some students do not like their teachers only because they teach them all the time. Some husbands hate their wives and vice versa, only because they compare their husbands/wives with others.
I wonder how sometimes our virtues and merits make some narrow-minded people dislike us. The fact is that most of the people do not want us to earn name and fame in our life and this is the reason why we are hated. Leonardo Di Caprio says: “People want you to be crazy. They want you miserable, just like them. They don’t want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.” I cannot help supporting the saying of Di Caprio as we can experience such things in our day-to-day life.
There are many factors that work to develop our hatred for others with whom we are generally acquainted with. Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist and painter, said: “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What is not part of ourselves does not disturb us.” Though exceptions are always there, a person dislikes another person only because the former does not have what the latter has (It may be wealth, health, virtues, righteousness, etc.). We are, truly speaking, unified by hating in common and by being hated in common. If we hate evils and bad things, we are always on the right path. But if we hate human beings, we are always in the wrong. We should hate lying, deceiving, boasting, cheating, dirtiness, bribery, taking advantage of others’ helplessness, nagging, miserliness, laziness, misbehaving, tormenting innocent creatures, disobeying man-made and Nature-made laws, indiscipline, enmity, sin, crime, jeering, teasing, stealing, killing, robbing. Only then we can understand the value of life.
All good things are doubted. Negativism is so in-built that if I say I have a great affection for you, you will ask ‘Really?’ But if I say I hate you, you will immediately accept it. So overpowering is ‘negativism’.
We can overcome hatred by love. “It is everyone’s duty to get free of hate, disease and restlessness by cultivating love, health, and calmness within,” says Dhammapad, the collection of Buddha’s sayings. Don’t hate human beings as we are the offsprings of the same Divinity. Christ says: “Hate the sin, not the sinner.” Gandhiji said: “Hate the crime, not the criminal.” Benjamin Disraeli said: “We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, it’s only end.”
We must be aware of the fact that the one who hates others is much perturbed and loses one’s own peace of mind. It gives me much pleasure and delight when I read the saying of German writer and statesman, Goethe: “Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others; and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.”
“Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.” — Swedish Proverb
