Re­spond­ing to per­sonal and col­lec­tive suf­fer­ing in war-zone ar­eas, British Mem­ber of the House of Lords, In­dar­jit Singh philo­soph­i­cally men­tions the need to fol­low the creed of Sar­bat da Bhala to al­le­vi­ate pain in his pop­u­lar BBC 4 Thought for the day pro­gram.

The week­end post brought its usual ap­peals for do­na­tions to help in al­le­vi­at­ing suf­fer­ing in Syria, Iraq and other ar­eas of the Mid­dle East. The scale of suf­fer­ing, wrought by in­ternecine po­lit­i­cal, re­li­gious and eth­nic con­flict, is truly dev­as­tat­ing and it is im­por­tant that we sup­port such ap­peals and help those risk­ing their lives to help the vic­tims of war and vi­o­lence.

Next month rep­re­sen­ta­tives of dif­fer­ent faiths and sec­u­lar so­ci­ety will meet at a ser­vice at West­min­ster Abbey for Hu­man­i­tar­ian Aid work­ers killed in con­flict. At the in­au­gural meet­ing, 4 years ago, I re­ferred to the ex­tra­or­di­nary ded­i­ca­tion and con­cern for oth­ers of an Amer­i­can, 26 year old Kayla Mueller, cap­tured by ISIS and re­port­edly killed in a Jor­dan­ian air strike.

“ “If I have suf­fered at all through­out this ex­pe­ri­ence, it is only in know­ing how much suf­fer­ing I have put you through….The thought of your pain is the source of my own.”

-26 year old Kayla Mueller, cap­tured by ISIS and killed in an airstrike.”

In a let­ter smug­gled to her fam­ily, she wrote: “If I have suf­fered at all through­out this ex­pe­ri­ence, it is only in know­ing how much suf­fer­ing I have put you through….The thought of your pain is the source of my own.”

No self-pity; no harsh word about her cap­tors. Only a con­cern for oth­ers. There are many oth­ers like Kayla, and they all de­serve our prayers and sup­port. The re­al­ity how­ever is their ded­i­ca­tion and in­ter­na­tional aid ef­forts alone, can­not cope with the suf­fer­ing of those caught up in the fight­ing, and in the huge dis­place­ment of peo­ple we have wit­nessed, which just goes on and on. 

I be­lieve it is im­por­tant to look more closely at the causes of such suf­fer­ing. True, that vi­o­lence be­gins with lo­cal ri­val­ries, but un­for­tu­nately, these are mag­ni­fied and made more hor­rific by larger fac­tional ri­valry be­tween the great pow­ers, sup­port­ing ri­val fac­tions with ever-more so­phis­ti­cated means of killing in pur­suit of strate­gic in­ter­est. The Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dass, look­ing at the du­bi­ous al­liances frac­tur­ing the so­ci­ety of his day wrote:

I am of God’s Fac­tion. All other fac­tional al­liances are sub­ject to death and de­cay. 

Speak­ing from a Sikh per­spec­tive, if we wish to avoid the con­tin­u­ing man-made suf­fer­ing of in­no­cents, I be­lieve we must con­tin­u­ally re­mind all in power to look be­yond, solely, their own self-in­ter­est, to what Sikhs call Sar­bat ka Bhala, a sin­gle- minded re­solve to se­cure the well­be­ing of all.