Be Mains Ready

Approach

• Give a brief introduction of Thiruvalluvar and his work
• Describe compassion and its importance
• Substantiate about the crisis of compassion with examples and how compassion moves the world
• Explain how compassion is useful in public service
• Conclude suitably

Answer

Tiruvalluvar a great saint-poet, preacher, and thinker was born in Tamilnadu. His work greatly reflects humane, refined, and universal moral values. According to him, compassion is the most important virtue in a human being. He says, “The world exists because of the existence of the uniquely beautiful quality of compassion ”.

It generates a sense of concern on confrontation with others suffering and a feeling of motivation to act towards its solution. At its core, compassion is a feeling or experience of pain and sorrow for others. It supplies the willpower to do what is necessary to make the world a more caring place.

This compassion may manifest in the form of charity towards the poor and inspired by a sense of social responsibility. It may also manifest as philanthropy.

However, in today’s world, the core essence of compassion has seen an erosion which has led to the crisis of human values. Valluvar questions the utility of one’s wisdom if one cannot treat others’ suffering as one’s own. Recent incidents of not allowing migration of people from one country to another (in Europe and Myanmar), killing of innocents in a bombing in Syria is a crisis of compassion.

How compassion has moved the world

Despite the crisis of compassion, the world has not been devoid of it totally as–

• Mahatma Gandhi’s compassionate outlook towards the miseries of the farmers of Champaran compelled him to act and he started the Champaran Satyagraha to relieve them of their suffering.
• Mother Teresa, has often been referred to as an embodiment of compassion who worked tirelessly for the welfare of the downtrodden.
• It is compassion that moved Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel laureate, to act for the children's rights and he could fight for social justice, equity, education and peace for all children in India and abroad.
• IAS officer, Armstrong Pame got a 100-km stretch of road constructed in the state of Manipur without any help from the government when he realized that the connectivity to the two villages was a huge problem and locals had to either walk for hours or swim across the river.

This virtue of compassion is all the more important in our country where most of the people are not aware of their rights and obligations out of their socio-economic conditions. In its absence, the public administration becomes mechanistic, rigid and ineffective.

Thus, we can say that compassion is a social capital that works for harmony among all. As Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer says, “The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others”, we can hear him echoing Valluvar’s ideas on love and compassion. Deprivation of this essential quality will lead to a collapse in public administration and efficient service delivery.