And Kashmir Smolders

The Valley has seen enormous discontent in the population in recent months.

Many people have been killed in firing by the security forces. A really tragic state of affair. Kashmir is almost like a problem without a solution. Things seem hopelessly bad.

But challenging problems have been solved elsewhere in the world.

It seems though that people must learn to deemphasize the role of religion in their lives for any hope of finding some sort of a solution.

Strangely enough, when you look at what is common to many of the enduring problems the world over, religion seems to be the one thing that is common to them all.

Think of the never-ending troubles in the Middle East. Jerusalem, the Holy Land being at the center of dispute, there being many claimants to the same patch of land.

Northern Ireland was a religious problem too though it seems to have been resolved amicably now.

Of course, the worst of the battles in the history of the world have been fought about national and racial identities.

It seems therefore that excessive racial and nationalistic zeal along with religion are the true poisons of mankind.