Give love to those who hate, Aamir tells tech leaders

Nasscom’s annual technology and leadership summit came to a close on Friday with Bollywood actor Aamir Khan evoking learnings from Jainism to talk about how he deals with hatred from people who often target him with an agenda. Perhaps the Indian IT industry, which has been facing politically motivated campaign against immigration and outsourcing in the US and Europe, can take learnings from Khan

Talking about how he reacts to trolls or people showing hatred towards him, Khan said that in the past his obvious response was to cut such people completely out of his life. However, listening to some of the teachings of Jainism, Khan now prefers to respond to hatred with love instead.

“In Jainism, there is a thought ‘Anekantavada’, which means that the other person can have a completely contrary view (compared to one’s own) but understand that the other person has the right to have a contrary view. So give them [people with contrary views] the benefit of doubt that they may be right and you may be wrong,” Khan said while responding to a query from the audience at the Nasscom conference in Mumbai.

“I believe that when someone does an act of hate towards me, I should give them more love. I try and reach out to them more. I feel a lot of negative emotions like hate come from fear. If I don’t attack them back, I’m trying to address that fear from them towards me,” Khan said.

Khan, who was delivering the keynote address at Nasscom’s annual technology and leadership summit, talked about how his show Satyamev Jayate tried to change hearts through storytelling

“I was doing the show because the primary emotion was love, not anger. So very consciously I included myself in the problem. It was about what we are doing in our lives instead of telling people what they are doing in their lives,” Khan said. “Law can’t change things. You need to change hearts. If a person feels the importance of change, there will be no need for a law.”

Watershed management

Khan’s NGO Pani foundation has been working in rural Maharashtra trying to improve the water situation by promoting watershed management.

Khan talked about how he ran a competition in rural Maharashtra to encourage people to adopt watershed management, and instead of offering them cash rewards, he provided them with only five-day training, and long-term assistance through advices. The NGO he said engaged hundreds of villages in the past couple of years by highlighting how some of the other villages in the State have benefited using these techniques.

“There are people who told us that nothing works without money in this country with so much corruption. But by engaging with them closely, we could transform over 45 villages in the State without giving them a any money at all,” Khan said.

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