New Delhi, March 23 -- "It's important to make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds."

This line by former US President Barack Obama is a single sentence doing the work of a sermon. It does not lecture. It does not accuse. It simply draws a line between two kinds of speech and asks which side you are standing on.

Obama did not say this as a throwaway remark. He said it during a period when American political discourse had become, by most measures, a weapon. The timing matters.

The gentleness of the phrasing is deliberate. He could have said, "Stop being cruel." He chose instead to talk about healing.

The quote is not soft. It is precise. It identifies something most people already know b...