THE PRICE OF PEACE

212 BC.

A mercenary of the invading army broke into the ante-chamber of a palatial house in Syracuse, Sicily, and found a bearded old man standing at a desk, playing with some contraptions. Thinking that the elderly man was trying to steal them, the raider ordered him to surrender and follow him out.

“Wait a bit, young man .Let me finish this work” was his reply.

Riled at his nonchalant response and implied impudence, the soldier immediately pulled his sword out of the scabbard and beheaded the defenseless old man.

The man who thus met with a tragic end was Archimedes, the great Greek mathematician and philosopher.

Cut to c.1200 CE

 Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turkic general in a bid to prove his military prowess attacked and ransacked several forts in Bihar. One of them, the marauders came to know, was not a castle, but not before hundreds of hapless Buddhist monks were massacred and the libraries of manuscripts containing priceless knowledge destroyed in arson.

 It was one of the world’s oldest universities,Nalanda .

The above mentioned incidents are a testimony to the fact that the existence of intellectuals and Cultural institutions of a country are dependent on the diligence of those who guard its frontiers.

Because,the invaders’ swords (read guns) do not know whether you are a pagan scientist or a ‘liberal secularist’. Nor do their mortars make any distinction between barracks and ‘premier institutions’ of learning.

Never, not even for a second, forget that the earth we walk on, the air we breathe and the water we drink are protected by the men who cannot afford to make a mistake.