Freedom fighter, statesman, moral compass and South Africa’s symbol of the struggle against racial oppression. (Source : KTLA)
Allah (SWT)'s world is very strange.
When we witness the affairs taking place in it, animate or in-animate affairs, then our sight, our vision returns to us. Dazzled, aweary.
Life of Nelson Mandela was one such affair.
Who could imagine that the UK, the epitome of western civilization till some time ago, will actively main the apartheid regime in South Africa till yesterday.
But that was the reality.
One feels as if one came out of, not medieval but ancient, times just a short while ago.
We remember Margret Thatcher assuring us that with courageous people like F.W. de Clark in place there is nothing for us to worry about.
Oh yes madam.
But she is gone some time back.
Apartheid breathed its last in South Africa in front of her eyes.
And now even Mandela is gone.
Even without much conscious effort one feels like a part of the unfolding of a saga. That is what great men do. They make others feel great.
Gandhi is in South Africa.
He returns home to ease himself into the leadership of Indian freedom movement and lo and behold within a matter of decades not only a few hundred year old rule of British in India comes to an end but the total and complete annihilation of the British empire is heralded.
And then one comes to know of a person, again in South Africa, using the same methods as Gandhi, trying solve even more fundamental problem - not mere colonization but real apartheid.
Those 27 years in jail must have been some ordeal.
And then he lived on to tell the story.
And more. A lead South Africa for decades.
In that aspect his life surpasses Gandhi's.
In India Gandhi was a relic as soon as the freedom dawned.
And then he was eliminated. As if getting side lined was not enough.
And the same forces, ever since assassination of Gandhi and even before, have been trying to hijack India.
If Mandela could win his rights in spite of stiff resistance by entrenched forces then Muslims of India can get their due in a country where they have got side lined by acts of omission and some times commission.
If Allah (SWT) gave so much to Mandela will He (SWT) ignore us who profess the creed favoured by Him?