In this world of conflict and chaos, it is only too easy to flow with the crowd, or be inactive. As we say in Electrical Engineering, take the path of least resistance. The world, however, brings in leaders from time to time, who sense what should be the correct path, use the force of their innate qualities and being, to overcome the resistance that comes with opposing the tide, so that those of us who are but ordinary may participate in an extraordinary future. Several names spring to mind - Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln. They all fought against injustice.

Slavery is among the worst man-made evils. How man could be so cruel to fellow-man is beyond comprehension. Several years back, I read a book called Roots by Alex Haley. The book moved me very much indeed. Later I read other books on slavery, its origins and its history. In the early days of slavery, Africans sold fellow Africans as slaves to the white man. There is a section on slavery in the Field Museum at Chicago. On every one of my visits to that section, I was unable to control my tears.

Many years ago, I was in a long-drawn technical meeting with a gentleman from Canada and an Indian who was long settled in the USA. During a coffee/ cigarette break, we got to talking on areas outside the business. Somehow the conversation veered into the subject of the lives of black Americans. Both the Canadian and the Indian were not happy about the affirmative action policy in the United States. The Indian went so far as to accuse the black community in the USA of loose morals - 'they do not maintain families, you know', while the Canadian nodded in agreement. I was perturbed by their attitude, and their lack of appreciation of black suffering. I asked them both one question: 'Did the American state allow them to keep families during those horrendous centuries of slavery?' Needless to say that we never discussed blacks and slavery again.

I recount the incident with the Canadian and the Indian American here only to show how easy it is for people to fall into the trap of the path of least resistance. Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Martin Luther King could have gone along with the social conscience or the lack of it in their days, but being the great men they were, they chose otherwise.

It is a coincidence that all the three were assassinated. (Their assassins could take umbrage under the argument of avoiding the path of least resistance in opposing those the world wanted to follow, but such a direction would be perverse and destructive). We, who benefit from the vision and sacrifices of these great men, should be grateful that these great men graced the earth for at least as long as they did.  In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

...Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again...

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Walt Whitman, an American Poet wrote the following poem. Titled O Captain, my Captain! the poem is about a ship which returns to port with a Captain who is dead. The poem is an elegy and allegorical. The ship represents the American State, the Captain, as you would have guessed, is Abraham Lincoln, and the sailor who mourns the death of his Captain is symbolic of the American people.