Zamir Ahmad
About four thousand years ago, an interesting conversation took place between Prophet Abraham and the king Nimrod. The conversation has been beautifully recorded in the Glorious Quran. When Abraham denounced polytheism, preached the doctrine of the oneness of God and smashed the idols of the temple, he was brought before the king. On being asked by the king who his God was, Abraham replied, “My Lord is He Who giveth life and causeth death.” Nimrod asked for two prisoners to be brought before him.
One was on a death row and the other was to be released the day after. He released the former and executed the latter. And with all arrogance at his command said, “(See) I (also) give life and cause death.” To this Abraham replied, “Lo! Allah causeth the sun to rise in the East, so do thou cause it to come up from the West.” After narrating the conversation the Quran says, “Thus was the disbeliever abashed. And Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”
It is important to understand that Nimrod did not claim for himself that he held the reins of the entire realm of causation in his hands; he claimed rather that he was the absolute sovereign of his empire and its inhabitants, that in his realm his word was law, that there was no authority superior to his own to which he was answerable. Any person who did not either acknowledge him to be his lord or took anyone other than him to be so, was a rebel and a traitor.
Many Kings and monarchs have all along the history been laying claims to divinity. Unlimited powers and the position to control peoples’ lives provide an illusion of divinity that is hard to ignore. But this phenomenon is not confined to kings only. ‘Power Corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, so famously said by Lord Acton, is an overarching truth. It is not just the kings or men in high seats of power who think and act as gods; it is the common “we” who also exhibit such a trait whenever we get a chance to.
A clerk sitting over a file of an hapless employee is as much drunk with power in his limited empire as was Nimrod or the other “god-kings”. So is a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer whenever each of them sits over an event of utmost importance to the hapless ‘subject’. And so are the Babus in the offices who make the commoners literally run from pillar to post for their mundane chores.
Oblivious to the fact that neither life nor position of power is eternal. We, most of times , think that we can make or mar the lives, careers, jobs, tasks of the people who are somehow placed in our domains. We tend to forget that power comes with utmost responsibilities. The responsibility to deliver. The responsibility to act and perform.
And more importantly the responsibility to empathise and empower. And quite unfortunately, no one remembers the ignominious fate that has met most of such demi-gods. Of Nimrod’s, for Instance. It was said that he was killed by mosquito. A lame one at that!
