Dr. Stephen Gill

Stephen Gill, an expressive voice of Canada, India and Pakistan, has authored novels, literary criticism, and collections of poems. His poetry and prose have appeared in more than five hundred publications, and he has received recognition, particularly for his poetry. He was born in Sialkot, Pakistan, where he passed his early childhood and grew in India. After teaching in Ethiopia for three years, he migrated to England before settling in Canada. He writes mostly about peace and social concerns. He now lives in Cornwall, Ontario. You can contact Dr. Gill through his website at www.stephengill.ca

Rapes in India

Thursday, 10 January 2013 16:14 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

Indian activists belonging to various rights organisations hold placards while they stage a demonstration in Bangalore on Dec 21, 2012, condemning the recent gang rape in New Delhi.

Women are part of the human body. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. The main source of rapes in India is the electoral practice. Democracy in India is mainly by the elite and for the elite.

The rape on the 16th of December 2012 has rocked India. The victim, a 23 year old medical student, was brutally beaten and molested by six men. She was raped in New Delhi in a moving bus that had tinted windows. She and her male friend were beaten up with iron rods, and thrown off the bus on a highway. She received injuries on her face and stomach. When doctors could not stabilize her condition, she was airlifted to a hospital in Singapore where she died. She was able to give her statement twice before death.

Tolerance is a Positive Force

Saturday, 08 December 2012 00:00 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

"Where there is no peace there is no health and where there is no health there is no prosperity and meaning in living. Peace, health and prosperity walk together" - Stephen Gill.

It is very encouraging that the United Nations has proved its interest in the spirit of tolerance through several means. The philosophy of awareness was behind the Year of Tolerance that was observed in 1995. To generate public awareness of tolerance to different cultures and religions, projects were launched. These projects included the use of traditional and nontraditional teaching methods, puppet shows, exhibitions, music and films.

Among the topics that were discussed and deliberated, included tolerance, multiculturalism, global diversity, and religious dialogue. These attempts led to the Declaration of Principles on Tolerance that were adopted and signed in Paris by one hundred and eighty-five member States of UNESCO on November 16, 1995. The signatories pledged to promote tolerance and non-violence in their countries through educational policies and programs. They also declared November 16, 2012 as the annual international day for tolerance.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is Unquestionable

Wednesday, 10 October 2012 00:00 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

Secretary General Klaus Welle accepts a congratulatory bouquet from Atle Leikvoll, the Norwegian Ambassador to the EU on the news of the award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union - Brussels, Oct. 12, 2012.

The peace prize awarded by the Nobel Committee to the European Union in 2012 has outraged and baffled many, and many more have derided it as shameful, absurd, satirical and a joke. The reason for derision of the European Union is its heavy debt and the dissatisfaction of some of its members who have threatened to get out of the Union. Some have dubbed the European Union a club of hatred and rivalry.

Rivalry and hatred among European nations existed before the European Union came into existence. On the positive side, no two members have come to armed clashes since its inception, whereas in the past seventy years France and Germany fought three wars.

The European Union was formed after the Second World War to maintain peace. The First World War that ended on November 11, 1918, caused several empires to collapse. In Europe, there was inflation and starvation everywhere. 10 million people perished in the war itself.

Sufism, Literature and Peace

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 19:00 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

The NFP is proud to present an excerpt from the talk presented by Dr. Stephen Gill, an NFP Contributor, at the International Conference on Sufism and Peace, held from March 14 to March 16 organized by the Pakistan Academy of Letters in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Peace wombs the fetus of wisdom and the flowers of beauty. Peace is the path of prosperity and the breath of bliss. I congratulate Mr. Fakhar Zaman, head of Pakistan Academy of Letters, and members of his executive who have worked hard to organize this meaningful gathering of intellectuals to promote peace. I have brought a message from the land of peace to the land that should be proud because of its sufi poets and sages who have played expressive roles for creating peace to make the world a better place.

When I talk of peace, I mean the absence of war and fear for every individual to walk around with an independent conscious to accept or to reject any ideology or philosophy. This is my dream and this is what I write about in my poetry.

The cradle of my dream is mind, a field where battles are fought first. This field—I mean the mind—is unsullied by prejudices when a child comes into this world. This is the field which is to be taken care of if human needs a life without the engines of destruction and a conscious that is not a slave to prejudices and hatred.

Swedish Academy is Failing to Achieve its Holy Grail?

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 19:00 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

It was a gasp of surprise that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to president of the United States of America who has served his nation not even for a year and who has not demonstrated anything worthwhile, except in his statements for disarmament. The question is why the Academy was in a rush to honor him.

The Academy could have waited for a year at least to let him justify to receive this honor. If it was mainly for his talks, then there have been leaders and presidents before him who made similar statements in favour of disarmaments and to make the world nuclear-free.

The Swedish Academy consists of intellectuals and wise members. They must have looked into the part that President Obama has played in making Europe a much safer place by backing away from the plans of the Bush administration to establish a new anti-missile system in Europe because of Iran.

President Obama may not receive any recognition from Americans, but he has and is likely to receive more recognitions from Europe because of his backing away from the plan of the previous president that affects the security of the whole of Europe. It seems that the Swedish Committee considered it as a meaningful step of President Obama. There is every possibility that Russia nominated the President Obama for this covetous recognition. Now it would be extremely difficult for the President to go back.

Symbolism

Thursday, 05 March 2009 19:00 GFP Columnist - Dr. Stephen Gill

The accurate representation of the feelings, thoughts, moods, sights, ideas and a variety of emotions is a serious enigma which poets face. Their representations are about personal opinions that are in the mind. Without going into philosophical or logical depth, I call them the god within.

Language is inadequate to bring out the god within, because this god is intangible. In addition to a mastery over the language, communicators need special skills and movements of hands, raising of eyebrows, changing tones, shrugging of shoulders and other gestures. Still, communications are not fully accurate and are likely to be misunderstood. Verbosity does not help either. Communication becomes more difficult in poetry because it is a form of condensed expression.

Therefore, poets use symbols to represent the god within at a higher level and also to add beauty. They take the help of metaphors to represent the god within. Aristotle said that metaphor is the soul of poetry. Metaphor is a figure of speech that is used for implied comparison. I have used this device freely in my poetry, such as “sickles of bigotry,”1; “pilots of words”2; “snakes of personal migraines”3; “the albatross of intolerance”4; and “a pyramid of justice”5 to quote a few.

Symbol, a higher form of metaphor, comes from the Greek word sumbolon that means sign, mark and token. In Greek sumballein means to put together. Synonyms of symbolism include typology, metaphor and analogy. Symbolic poetry is visible expression of something that is invisible -- a marriage between abstraction and concrete. This device is used to express the hidden meaning veiled by the obvious meaning -- to express something that is abstract as tangible. This device is also used to express something that is tangible in another tangible way.