Though the reach of the federation reached out to the south east Asia and we have concrete evidence to show that there were war plans between the Axis power Germany and Japan, which related to the Indian subcontinent also .Now, it is in this climate that individuals of remarkable courage and the depth of understanding humanity about which Professor Lokesh Chandra spoke with such distinction a short while ago.
Had the courage to oppose the dominant view embodied in the wisdom carried by the government of the day of Japan. I was really struck by the word which Prof. Lokesh Chandra used, they were described as “thought criminals” and in that capacity incarcerated so that the very notion of peace, the very notion that the human being within the nation and human beings in the world community as a whole should share sense of brotherhood. And peace among each other was banned and that particular time in Japan ; and we see the inversion of this situation as through an extremely brutal act of violence in 1945 when Japan became a sight for detonating that gruesome, that horrible weapons that humanity has ever known, in the course of social conflict I don’t know how widely it is appreciated that the two bombs that were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in exercise in complete futility ,because Japan was already willing to come to terms with the allied powers at that point in the human history. The only condition that the Japanese wanted the allied powers to observe, was not to harm the person of the emperor and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done in full knowledge of this fact. Japan was already willing to Accept these at that particular juncture .I emphasize this because normally the literature generated in the West, it has been argued that the rationale behind dropping two atom bombs in Japan was to force the Japanese army towards peace, that is completely wrong because Japan was already in a mood to make peace at that time even the militarist government in Japan, of which I have spoken early and many theoreticians of warfare and strategic thinkers have argued, that the explosion of two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first acts of cold war which held the world community in its grip for the next thirty or forty years. But, I don’t want to stress this point, I want to stress much more .The sentiments which Toda communicated to the Japanese people, more particularly to the youth of the nation, in the language which has been described by the two speakers who preceded me and I am sure will be put forth in much greater depth and intensity by the last speaker in the list that we have today. I want to take this spirit and explore its international ramifications in the twentieth century and at the moment of time we stand. I think it has become extremely important for us as Indians to explore the ramifications of this movement for peace and non-violence, because if I may use this word, an Indian speaker, citizen not as an expert in this region. I think that events that have transpired in our part of the world in the last couple of years have brought us nearer and have also created in us the consciousness of this fact that we stand on a precipice from which we can be suddenly hulled into nuclear war and I don’t have to stress this point very much because happening in the last year or two have created such a situation in the part of the world in which we live, so that our consciousness of the dangers of the nuclear weapons and the facts that they didn’t quite literally, annihilate humanity as a whole in a consciousness we share as citizens of this country, in a way we did not share earlier. It is probably correct to say that over the past two decades both the nations that were engaged in a war like situation, not very long ago did possess nuclear weapons in substantial numbers and in sufficient numbers to destroy at least the principle cities in the areas in their shared frontier .i, however, would take this opportunity to explore a little the depth of the tradition of non-violence in our society, as it is directed towards the violence in general and as it should be directed against nuclearisation in particular ,because nuclearisation represents human violence in its most awesome form. Professor Lokesh Chandra spoke earlier of Shakyamuni Gautam Buddha, the thought that I want to share with you is that our civilization has undergone two very extraordinary experiences in transformation .2500 years ago, coincident in time with the life of the Shakyamuni and the other in our own times coincident with the life of Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi and I think it is no accident that two of the great theorists and practitioners of non-violence came to live in our society with messages which were Indian and universal at the same time, at the point when people were going through these crisis will not waste your time ,by telling you about these crisis in full, but if you look at the history of our society, in the fifteenth, sixteenth century B. C. the period around which the Shakyamuni was active in propounding the message of compassion and non-violence ,there were tremendous transformations taking place in our country which led to a great measure of conflict within the South Eastern regions of those times and above all Shakyamuni was a great healer .if one were to pursue ,with archaeological precision his wanderings after he had achieved wisdom at Sarnath, he quite literally spent the next fifteen years of his life, moving around the Gangetic belt in the region between Patna and the upper regions of Ganga , that was the area where he spent most of his life talking to the villagers talking to the urban community of his period and his detention ,the conflict ,the apprehensions that were plaguing then because when human societies undergo very deep transformations ,then all these sentiments become a part of their living experience .I think that Shakyamuni knew the deep Gangetic plain as well as the palm of his hand ,I am not using this as a metaphor at all and this was the great area of his activity which we can today recreate and reconstruct through the science of Archaeology which is available to us .What was he trying to do ,he was trying to refer to the three forms of violence which are located and are an integral part of the human condition.
1. The violence within the individual psyche.
2. The violence between communities and classes with the political order
3. The violence between political societies in the larger community.
The frame of reference which he had was south Asia, the frame of reference which he have today in the world as whole. But the forms of violence which wit which Shakyamuni was dealing 2500 years ago , are not very different with which Gandhi dealt in his own time, half an century ago , he was indeed a victim of the violence himself in the very premises we are meeting to discuss . And, I wanted to say , even more explicit , I personally look upon Shakyamuni and Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi as two of the greatest products of the civilization , if I may put it before you and Gandhi put forward in a very dramatic form a sense of power which can redress human society .at the individual level , at the national level and the global level which we need to keep before us. A great Asian Statesman, who was a near contemporary of Gandhi, I refer to Mao Tse Tung
Described as power that flows out of a barrel of a gun. Gandhiji described power in terms, which were completely in reverse. Gandhi’s formula of power was a quality, which flew out of non-violence and truthful utterance out of mobilization of people.
And of observing the norms of truth in human, resolving conflicts and disputes between human societies, classes and communities and within the individual psyche itself. So, the three terrain of violence, which was spoken by the Shakyamuni were reechoed in Gandhi’s thoughts but he also devised a system of social power, a sense of awareness whereby these tiffs could be resolved through truthful utterance and non-violence, through coming together of the people and through verbal dialogue, through engagement in dialogue which would be imbued with the spirit of non-violence. And I think this is one of the remarkable things, lessons which he held out to our society.
Now, I want to argue with you that although in the last century, and possibly increasing in our century we shall see at least for sometime, an increasing proliferation of nuclear weapons which is not as if that is the only trend, that is discernable to the eye as we look around ourselves .If somebody was to ask me what was the most momentous happening in the century that has just passed away, I would like to point my finger to the United states and the manner in which the man called Martin Luther King who very expressible
Indicated his obligation to Mahatma Gandhi attempted to resolve racial conflict within the United States of America through the methods of non-violence. Like Gandhi, he too was consumed by the violence that he was trying to quell. Yet it is the fact out of the message of Martin Luther King which was firmly enhanced in the Gandhian tradition and I respect , King himself very expressly refereed to the fact that he learnt from the example of Gandhi in the course of the freedom struggle of India . The Afro-American communities of North America of U.S.A particularly have been able to emancipate.
I mean to argue that racial discrimination in U.S.A has been eliminated as a whole would be completely wrong, but this situation of the Afro-American community has improved very substantially through the methods advocated by Martin Luther King in the 60’s of the twentieth century.
A lost example that I would like to put forth, in the triumph of the non-violent movement, over-violence of the racial character in particular is victory caused in South Africa by a man called Nelson Mandela who places himself in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and president Martin Luther King. I am of a vintage, now the last two or three decades of the twentieth century as a person of certain amount of awareness as well of interest in what was happening not only within our country which I studied professionally, as a student of history but what was happening in the world as a whole.
If in 1980’s or 1990’s somebody had come to a group of world citizens and told them that the South African situation, that the structure of Apartheid could be demolished through non-violent constitutional means .The reaction this or that community would have been of extreme skepticism at this stage. Most of us were convinced that it would be a most horrifying kind of violence that would rid the indigenous people of South Africa of the European domination that had set upon their head, at least for a century or slightly more, but it took a remarkable leadership, the constraint, the wisdom and the understanding of non-violence with a mechanism of resolving human conflict. In the minds of individuals like Nelson Mandela who I think stands among the towering figures that, I think humanity in the twenty first century to achieve the impossible and to bring about the transition within South Africa from the society based on racial hatred to a society based on co-operative co-existence between different races whether they come from the European world, or Asian world or they are indigenous people of South Africa.
I really want to put this before you because I see the world around me diametrically opposed to each other. I see opposite trends manifesting themselves simultaneously in the world at one level, are the factors in power of violence which we see gaining strength today of a sort which they did not have but I do not see the reality with a discerning eye we can also see the power of non-violence, this aggregation of strength in human communities in Japan, in India, in North America, in the African states of a very formidable kind and I think, in the ultimate analysis there is the secret of right education, that the Soka Gakkai and their leader whose 100th birth anniversary we are celebrating today turn to the human mind particularly the youthful human mind full of promise and hope for the future as the most powerful instrument in transforming human communities and human societies at the core . In a way, that they adopted the path of peace rather than took the path of violence which can only end in mutual self-destruction .The North Americans have devised a term, they are very good at devising terms called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). I think, that is what strategic thinkers talk when they play war games on table on how many billion citizens of enemy country you knock off , I am talking of real world not make belief world , when I say this.
I think that though these trends, the opposing trends, one awesome in nature, and the other full of hope and promise in its grave seriousness are both visible in human communities , and I think which is open to humanity , by following the path of non-violence and truth echoed by the Shakyamuni 2500 years ago .But echoed by many great souls in different nations , in different parts of the world to chart a course for itself which assumes that all of us live in a state of human dignity and spiritual enlightenment. |
