Love

I have had long discussions with frens on what love is. Rarely found anybody agreeing to my thinking that love is universal. May be I wasn’t stating my point clearly. But while going through one of the letters of Shaheed Bhagat Singh to Shaheed Sukhdev, I realized that my thoughts have found a voice.

Here is an extract from a letter Bhagat wrote to Sukhdev on April 5, 1929.

“While discussing anybody's character you asked me one thing, whether love ever proved helpful to any man. Yes, I answer that question today. To Mazzini it was. You must have read that after the utter failure and crushing defeat of his first rising he could no bear the misery and haunting ideas of his dead comrades. He would have gone mad or committed suicide but for one letter of a girl he loved. He would as strong as any one, nay stronger than all. As regards the moral status of love I may say that it in itself is nothing BUT PASSION, not an animal passion but a human one, and very sweet too. Love in itself can never be an animal passion. Love always elevates the character of man. It never lowers him, provided love be love. You can't call these girls - mad people, as we generally see in films - lovers. They always play in the hands of animals passions. The true love cannot be created. It comes of its own accord, nobody can say when. It is but natural. And I may tell you that a young man and a young girl can love each other, and with the aid of their love they can overcome the passions themselves and can maintain their purity. I may clear one thing here; when I said that love has human weakness, I did not say it for an ordinary human being at this stage, where the people generally are. But that is most idealistic stage when man would overcome all these sentiments, the love, the hatred, and so on. When man will take reason as the sole basis of his activity. But at present it is not bad, rather good and useful to man. And moreover while rebuking the love. I rebuked the love of one individual for one, and that too in idealistic stage. And even then, man must have the strongest feelings of love which he may not confine to one individual and may make it universal. Now I think I have cleared my position.”

For the complete letter please refer the following link:
http://shahidbhagatsingh.org/index.asp?link=april5

Many may still not agree to these views as such love may seem impossible to find in today's world, but so is God. And it's not for nothing that love has been given the status equal to God by saints.