Archbishop Desmond Tutu did more than just help dismantle apartheid: Tharoor in Cape Town

Johannesburg, Nov 21 (PTI) The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu did more than just help dismantle apartheid in South Africa as his "conscience was universal", Indian parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor said in Cape Town.

Tharoor was delivering the annual Desmond Tutu Lecture hosted by the Foundation established in the name of the revered South African leader in Cape Town on Thursday.

“Tutu’s legacy is often framed by his role in dismantling apartheid, a struggle that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. But to confine him to that chapter alone is to miss the full breadth of his moral imagination,” Tharoor said.

“His fight was never only against racial injustice in South Africa, it was against every system that denied the dignity of the human person. He stood unflinchingly for women’s equality; for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people; for the protection of our planet; for the oppressed in Palestine; and for the poor and marginalised across the globe,” he added.

Tharoor said Tutu’s conscience was universal, rather than a selective one, nestled in the African principle of Ubuntu – I am because you are.

“In a world increasingly defined by borders, physical, ideological and emotional, Ubuntu is a radical act of resistance. Tutu’s values were not abstract ideals – they were lived convictions.

“He embodied forgiveness, not as a passive gesture, but as a fierce commitment to healing. He championed truth not as a weapon, but as a balm. He practised justice not as retribution, but as restoration,” Tharoor added.

Tharoor said these values remain relevant today in an age which calls for moral courage that refuses to be silenced, in view of the challenge that Tutu left to reimagine co-existence. He called on the audience to actively pursue the ideals of Tutu, not just be admirers of it.

“Let us choose the path that Tutu walked on – the path of radical empathy; of courageous truth-telling; of unflinching hope. Let us imagine peace not as a distant ideal, but as a daily discipline and let us build it together,” Tharoor said, adding that the world’s religions are not in competition.

The Indian parliamentarian added that Tutu understood this profoundly. Though rooted in Christian theology, which he studied, his moral compass was not confined to one creed or one holy book. He saw in every faith tradition a reservoir of wisdom; a call to compassion; a summons to justice.

“He believed that the religious and ethical foundations of religion could be harnessed not to divide humanity, but to unite it,” Tharoor said.

Tharoor also related this to his own beliefs as a Hindu, citing Swami Vivekananda, who took Hinduism to the world in the late 19th century, saying that Hinduism stood for both universal acceptance and tolerance.

He said Vivekananda’s idea of tolerance being translated into acceptance of other beliefs was “a great recipe for co-existence”.

“The greatest truth to the Hindu is that which accepts the existence of other truths,” Tharoor said as he called for interfaith dialogues such as those which had been used in South Africa against apartheid, against genocide across the globe and even against partition in India.

“In our time, we must cultivate what Tutu embodied – a theology of embrace that does not ask: ‘Who is my neighbour’, but declares: ‘everyone is my neighbour,’” Tharoor suggested.

Commenting on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established after the end of apartheid, Tharoor said Tutu’s chairing of the Commission was not just to forget the horrors of apartheid-era white minority rule or to grant impunity to those who had committed them, but rather a path to truth through justice, and through justice to healing.

“The world does not need more cynics. It needs more Tutus or Tutu-like souls; fierce in their compassion; joyful in their resistance; relentless in their belief that peace is possible’ optimistic in their determination to their part in bringing it about; to be that ripple in that tidal wave of change," Tharoor said. PTI FH RD   RD RD