All Humans Are Equal

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 1 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Declaration of Independence

All beings, great or small, are equally manifestation of God; the difference is only the degree of manifestation. 

Swami Vivekananda

Your Lord resides in each patient's soul. Believe this and serve them! Treat each patient as your equal and serve them unconditionally.

Jagadguru Kripalu Ji Maharaj, founder JKP charitable hospitals

Since the existence of mankind a great many men have waged war against the inequality that surrounds us. Some are poor and others are rich. Some are rulers and others are ruled. Some are beautiful and others consider themselves ugly. And many more such cases of discrimination within human beings based on materialistic qualities. In fact the charter of thousands of organization trying to end discrimination in today's modern society painfully points out that it is still very real. A society that is bordering on discoveries that would someday enable scientists to tweak the human genome to artificially produce a human being that may not suffer from any physical ailments. A society where an employer is proud to call itself an equal opportunity employer with no discrimination based on categorization of caste, creed, sex or race. 

We are also a society where we have stories of men and women who survived the most strenuous of hardships to rise from rags to riches. The rag to riches here is just a metaphor which encapsulates stories where men and women literally rose from rags to riches to other men and women who overcame other mental or physical afflictions to rise high. So we are a society that is well aware that any categorization is just temporary, perhaps just a convenient way to look down upon others, that seems to be the only justification for a non-believer in human equality. 

Any attribute that can be used to discriminate between one human being and another is a temporal phenomenon. Someone begging on street today could be tomorrow's millionaire. A frail young Steve Rogers today would become the Captain America of tomorrow, although a comic-book example yet points out the glaring fact that weakness is temporary. A young man in the United States of 1960s would be proud to see an African-American president. In India JKP Education is providing free education to over 5000 girls from pre-primary to post-graduate level, in a country that is working hard to overcome caste and sex discrimination. So any discrimination of today can be easily dissolved by a little bit of determination and help from others in the society. Whether it might take a lifetime of a single human being or a generation or even the turn of ages in a society but good does seems to come out eventually. Yet we as a society are struggling to align ourselves to the concept of brotherhood.

So how can we look at another human being who is going through a phase where he or she is not sharing the same luxuries as enjoyed by you or me currently? It is a difficult question, especially for people who haven't seen the "tough" times. I can never imagine a time when people were enslaved and taken from their homes to foreign lands. I can never imagine a time when a plunderer could attack my home and forcibly acquire my possessions. Let alone that, I cannot even imagine a life of a homeless person; of course I can temporarily feel sad or might even give a few bucks but the satisfaction of not being in that situation gives a relief. 

Vedic philosophy seems to guide us towards an understanding that can help abolish discrimination and spread a message of universal brotherhood. Yudhisthira replied to a question from Yaksha, 'What is the greatest wonder?' that 'day after day countless people die. Yet the living wishes to live forever. O Lord, what can be a greater wonder?' It points at endless, though not perpetual, cycle of birth, death and rebirth human beings undergo until they are God-realized or in other words are blessed with the true knowledge. Until that day all human beings are equal as all are under the same form of ignorance. It is true some might be under the ignorance lying under a sun on a beautiful beach while someone else might be on the street on a rag. But in both cases the ignorance exists. And both have the equal opportunity to remove the ignorance, whether in this lifetime or in some other. So my brother's situation who doesn't have the same material objects that I currently possess could have been easily reversed and applicable to me or it was the case in a previous lifetime. After all we're divine souls on the same path even though our material body and senses are currently being provided by a different degree of material wealth. So where the concept of inequality does arises in this ephemeral situation?