War & peace

Hong Kong currently has two very interesting — and singularly contrasting — visitors: a US war machine that’s on its last run, and an Indian spiritual guru who’s conquering new worlds with his message of peace. The war machine — the 47-year-old aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk — docked in Hong Kong on its final foreign port of call before it is decommissioned later this year.

The arrival of the 82,000-tonne warship, which participated in the naval wargames involving four nations (including India) in the Bay of Bengal last September, is seen as a sign that Sino-US military relations are back on track – a sea-change from last November, when China denied permission for the US ship to dock in Hong Kong. 
Kitty Hawk belongs to the Seventh Fleet of the US Navy, which was deployed in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 by the Nixon Administration to try and inhibit Indira Gandhi from supporting the liberation struggle in Bangladesh.

It also served as a springboard for the US bombing of Vietnam during the war in the 1960s: aircraft from the Kitty Hawk flew sorties over North Vietnam and bombed VietCong positions. The combat-weary war veteran is now on its last run. 

In striking contrast to Kitty Hawk’s martial history, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar, who is also in town, brings a message of pacifism that the people of Hong Kong have embraced quite readily.

At a public event on Monday, the spiritual guru led a 1,000-strong audience through a breathing meditation session, and left them with a message on the importance of education. “There are,” he sermonised, “three things that are necessary: education, education and education.”

The first, he emphasised, is “the education that’s necessary for your job and career.” Second, he says, is “the education that helps you be a better human being... how friendly and effective you are in your communication.” The third “education” is the realisation of a “higher spiritual evolution”, and the importance of living in the present.

The spiritual message that Sri Sri Ravishankar imparts may be a universal one, but it’s no less effective and well-received for all that. In Hong Kong (and even in parts of mainland China), the Art of Living Foundation has had enormous success in drawing adherents to its fold. To my simple mind, it strikes me as a better way to conquer new worlds than sending in warships.

Indian minds are winning another kind of territorial battle — on the shelves in bookstores. These days in the ‘Recommended’ section in several bookstores in Hong Kong, I find titles on India have either displaced — or are gaining primacy over — books on China.

Among the frontliners: India Arriving by Rafiq Dossani; The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone by Shashi Tharoor; Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping their Future – and Yours by Tarun Khanna; and India’s Century by Kamal Nath.