By Sudarshan Iyengar
Come October 2 and we remember Gandhi. It is reassuring that at least the ritual continues. Let us hope that with the help of the ritual someday, the philosophy of lived non-violence will become the nature of humanity. Till 2022, it used to be argued that wars were down but armed conflicts rose. Then came the Russia-Ukraine war, and 2022 alone witnessed a more than 50 per cent increase in conflict-related civilian deaths, according to the United Nations. The Israeli invasions and bombings of Palestine have made this global situation worse and we have an unending cycle of death and misery being inflicted on the Palestinian people now. The misery of wars apart, violence comes in other ways and means, loosely branded as “conflicts”.
Conflicts now tend to be continuous, unending and normalised. They are sometimes seen as less deadly in the sense that violence is often between domestic groups rather than two full-fledged or equally powerful States. Unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted State institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change, have become dominant drivers of conflict. Separately, the UN has also noted that “technological advances have raised concerns about lethal autonomous weapons and cyber attacks, the weaponization of bots and drones, and the live-streaming of extremist attacks,” coupled with a “rise in criminal activity involving data hacks and ransomware (just as) international cooperation is under strain, diminishing global potential for the prevention and resolution of conflict and violence in all forms.”
The Global Peace Index 2024 notes that 92 countries are involved in conflicts. Gaza and Ukraine are the primary drivers for the fall in global peace. Last year alone saw some 162,000 deaths due to conflicts. The US military capabilities are up three times higher than China. Global GDP affected was 13.5 % or $ 19.1 trillion in 2023. Competitive approaches and policies, notably the US-China strains are also believed to be a driver of a series of conflicts between and within countries.
A worrying aspect is also that homicides are becoming more frequent in some parts of the world, while gender-based attacks are increasing globally. The long-term impact on the development of interpersonal violence, including violence against children, is also more widely recognized.
Gandhi remains a mute witness to these happenings in the world today. Humanity has become conveniently ignorant and forgotten that manifest violence and conflicts have deep connections with how we think, behave and live. Ignorance and intellectual arrogance deliver disasters in personal lives. Honesty and integrity are at stake. Human virtues have given way to vices due to greed and indulgence. People holding the highest public offices are hardly persons of character. This is a fundamental crisis.
This is not to offer some lofty thoughts or to take a moral pedestal. Let us recognise that our character collectively (including this writer), is responsible for what is manifest in the collective behaviour of all of us irrespective of country and place. To build a peaceful world with minimum conflicts and violence individuals will have to be educated to self-regulate and handle individual liberty.
Individual liberty has led to licentious behaviour ignoring, violating and subverting social norms and State laws. Gandhi in Hind Swaraj has quoted Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known biologist and anthropologist of the 19th Century. “That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in his youth that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is clear… whose mind is stored with knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and the laws of her operations… knows passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience… to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself. Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is in harmony with nature. He will make the best of her and she of him.”
Unfortunately, the education system all over the world has failed to educate the next generation in the spirit mentioned above. Violence will not go away in a day. It is the next generations that we have to educate. Gandhi had demonstrated that education of heart, hand and head in that sequence was the philosophy and pedagogy of education.
The prevalent education system indirectly inculcates the spirit of competition and ‘me first’. This relegates the spirit of cooperation, compassion and love. Competition is for a ‘good life’. A good life is increasing seen as bodily comfort and pleasure. It is not able to lead individuals to happiness in life. Unlimited demand for physical resources and uninterrupted supply of them is deemed growth and development of individuals and reflected in the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
It is understood now that the conflicts within a country and between countries are mainly to command natural and man-made resources that produce physical goods and services for bodily comfort and pleasure. Of course, there is a section that claims that this is a quest for truth to know Nature as deeply as possible and make the earth the best living planet with prosperity. Competition, conflict and unbridled consumption coupled with a crisis of character have led religious fundamentalism to rise to save and attack so-called liberal societies and nations.
Ethnic violent conflicts are also essentially to have political and economic controls. The global hunger for power and dominance to enable command over resources fans hatred for each other. It may not sound very logical and connections may appear weak between the politico-economic power games and the rising religious fundamentalism, but a deeper reflection will reveal the connection. The negative features of modernity that have been well discussed by Gandhiji more than a hundred years back have led certain traditional societies to take recourse to religious fundamentalism, enslave their populations in archaic beliefs and brainwash them to raise bloody wars in the name of establishing a religion-based civilisation.
This does not augur well for humanity. Race, economic inequality, religion and colour prejudices have come back with vengeance and will lead to escalating manifest and structural violence in the world. How does humanity come out of this? Gandhi lived a life and showed it. All his life until the last day he kept reflecting on his weaknesses and tried to remove them to strengthen his character.
This is how Gandhi stayed on his path to gain his ‘Swaraj’. Each of us must attempt to do this by self-reflection, self-examination and self-correction. Political and economic decentralisation of power will have to be adopted as a policy by nations. The process will introduce control on over-exploitation of natural resources.In the words of Satish Kumar, founder of the Schumacher College, Devon, U.K., nurturing the soul, loving others in society and caring for soil will lead humanity towards a non-violent world. This exactly is Mahatma Gandhi’s message to build a non-violent and liveable world.
(Dr.Sudarshan Iyengar is the former Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith, the University founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920, and is co author of the book ‘Abundant Love’, a long form conversation with Satish Kumar). (e-mail: [email protected]) (Syndicate: The Billion Press)